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CONFESSIONS 



OF AN 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 



To weep afresh a long since cancelled woe, 
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight. 
Shakspeare's Sonnets. 



SECOND EDITION. 



LONDON : 

PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, FLEET STREET. 




^.6 



^ 



^ & 



I 



1987 



LONDON : — PRINTED BY J. MOYES, GREVIELE STREET. 



NOTICE TO THE READER. 



The incidents recorded in the Preli- 
minary Confessions, lie within a period 
of which the earlier extreme is now 
rather more, and the latter extreme 
less, than nineteen years ago : conse- 
quently, in a popular way of comput- 
ing dates, many of the incidents might 
be indifferently referred to a distance 
of eighteen or of nineteen years ; and, 
as the notes and memoranda for this 
narrative were drawn up originally 
about last Christmas, it seemed most 
natural in all cases to prefer the former 
date. In the hurry of composing the 
narrative, though some months had 
then elapsed, this date was every 
where retained: and, in many cases, 



IV NOTICE TO THE READER. 

perhaps, it leads to no error, or to 
none of importance. But in one in- 
stance, viz. where the author speaks 
of his own birth-day, this adoption of 
one uniform date has led to a positive 
inaccuracy of an entire year: for, 
during the very time of composition, 
the nineteenth year from the earlier 
term of the whole period revolved to 
its close. It is, therefore, judged pro- 
per to mention, that the period of that 
narrative lies between the early part 
of July, 1802, and the beginning or 
middle of March, 1803. 

Oct. 1, 1821. 



CONFESSIONS 



OF AN 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



TO THE READER. 

I here present you, courteous reader, with 
the record of a remarkable period in my 
life : according to my application of it, I 
trust that it will prove, not merely an inte- 
resting record, but, in a considerable de- 
gree, useful and instructive. In that hope 
it is, that I have drawn it up : and that must 
be my apology for breaking through that 
delicate and honourable reserve, which, for 
the most part, restrains us from the public 
exposure of our own errors and infirmities. 
Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to Eng- 



2 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

lish feelings, than the spectacle of a human 
being obtruding on our notice his moral 
ulcers or scars, and tearing away that ' de- 
cent drapery/ which time, or indulgence to 
human frailty, may have drawn over them : 
accordingly, the greater part of our confes- 
sions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial 
confessions) proceed from demireps, adven- 
turers, or swindlers : and for any such acts 
of gratuitous self-humiliation from thos.e 
who can be supposed in sympathy with the 
decent and self-respecting part of society, 
we must look to French literature, or to 
that part of the German, which is tainted 
with the spurious and defective sensibility 
of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, 
and so nervously am I alive to reproach of 
this tendency, that I have for many months 
hesitated about the propriety of allowing 
this, or any part of my narrative, to come 
before the public eye, until after my death 
(when, for many reasons, the whole will be 
published): and it is not without an an- 
xious review of the reasons for and against 
this step, that I have, at last, concluded on 
taking it. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 3 

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural 
instinct, from public notice : they court 
privacy and solitude: and, even in their 
choice of a grave, -will sometimes sequester 
themselves from the general population of 
the churchyard, as if declining to claim fel- 
lowship with the great family of man, and 
wishing (in the affecting language of Mr, 
Wordsworth) 

— humbly to express 
A penitential loneliness. 

It is well, upon the w r hole, and for the 
interest of us all, that it should be so : nor 
would I willingly, in my own person, mani- 
fest a disregard of such salutary feelings ; 
nor in act or word do any thing to weaken 
them. But, on the one hand, as my self- 
accusation does not amount to a confession 
of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, 
if it did, the benefit resulting to others, 
from the record of an experience purchased 
at so heavy a price, might compensate, by 
a vast overbalance, for any violence done to 
the feelings I have noticed, and justify a 
breach of the general rule. Infirmity and 
misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt, 
b 2 



4 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

They approach, or recede from, the shades 
of that dark alliance, in proportion to the 
probable motives and prospects of the of- 
fender, and the palliations, known or secret, 
of the offence : in proportion as the tempta- 
tions to it were potent from the first, and 
the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was 
earnest to the last. For my own part, 
without breach of truth or modesty, I 
may affirm, that my life has been, on the 
whole, the life of a philosopher : from my 
birth I was made an intellectual creature : 
and intellectual in the highest sense my 
pursuits and pleasures have been, even from 
my school-boy days. If opium-eating be 
a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to 
confess that I have indulged in it to an 
excess, not yet recorded* of any other man, 
it is no less true, that I have struggled 
against this fascinating enthralment with a 
religious zeal, and have, at length, accom- 



* * Not yet recorded, 1 1 say : for there is one cele- 
brated man of the present day, who, if all be true 
which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in 
quantity. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 5 

plished what I never yet heard attributed to 
any other man — have untwisted, almost to 
its final links, the accursed chain which 
fettered me. Such a self-conquest may 
reasonably be set off in counterbalance to 
any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not 
to insist, that in my case, the self-conquest 
was unquestionable, the self-indulgence 
open to doubts of casuistry, according as 
that name shall be extended to acts aiming 
at the bare relief of pain, or shall be re- 
stricted to such as aim at the excitement of 
positive pleasure. 

Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge : 
and, if I did, it is possible that I might still 
resolve on the present act of confession, in 
consideration of the service which I may 
thereby render to the whole class of opium- 
eaters. But who are they ? Reader, I am 
sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. 
Of this I became convinced some years ago, 
by computing, at that time, the number of 
those in one small class of English society 
(the class of men distinguished for talents, 
or of eminent station), who were known to 



6 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters : 
such for instance, as the eloquent and be- 
nevolent , the late dean of ; Lord 

— — ; Mr. — — , the philosopher ; a late 
under-secretary of state (who described to 
me the sensation which first drove him to 
the use of opium, in the very same words 

as the dean of , viz. u that he felt as 

though rats were gnawing and abrading the 

coats of his stomach ") ; Mr. ; and 

many others, hardly less known, whom it 
would be tedious to mention. Now, if one 
class, comparatively so limited, could fur- 
nish so many scores of cases (and that 
within the knowledge of one single inquirer), 
it was a natural inference, that the entire 
population of England would furnish a pro- 
portionable number* The soundness of this 
inference, however, I doubted, until some 
facts became known to me, which satisfied 
me that it was not incorrect. I will men- 
tion two : 1. Three respectable London 
druggists, in widely remote quarters of 
London, from whom I happened lately to 
be purchasing small quantities of opium, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 7 

assured me, that the number of amateur 
opium-eaters (as r I may term them) was, at 
this time, immense; and that the difficulty 
of distinguishing these persons, to whom, 
habit had rendered opium necessary, from 
such as were purchasing it with a view to 
suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and 
disputes. This evidence respected London 
only. But, 2. (which will possibly surprise 
the reader more,) some years ago, on pass- 
ing through Manchester, I was informed by 
several cotton - manufacturers, that their 
work-people were rapidly getting into the 
practice of opium-eating ; so much so, that 
on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the 
druggists were strewed with pills of one, 
two, or three grains, in preparation for the 
known demand of the evening. The imme- 
diate occasion of this practice was the low- 
ness of wages, which, at that time, would 
not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits : 
and, wages rising, it may be thought that 
this practice would cease : but, as I do not 
readily believe that any man, having once 
tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will 
afterwards descend to the gross and mortal 



o CONFESSIONS OF AN 

enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for 
granted, 

That those eat now, who never ate before > 
And those who always ate, now eat the more. 

Indeed the fascinating powers of opium 
are admitted, even by medical writers, who 
are its greatest enemies : thus, for instance, 
Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich-hospital, 
in his " Essay on the Effects of Opium," 
(published in the year 1763), when attempt- 
ing to explain, why Mead had not been 
sufficiently explicit on the properties, coun- 
teragents, &c. of this drug, expresses him- 
self in the following mysterious terms, 
(tpuvavra (tvvbtokti) : " perhaps he thought the 
subject of too delicate a nature to be made 
common ; and as many people might then 
indiscriminately use it, it would take from 
that necessary fear and caution, which 
should prevent their experiencing the ex- 
tensive power of this drug : for there are 
many 'properties in it, if universally known > 
that would habituate the use, and make it more 
in request with us than the Turks themselves .- 
the result of which knowledge," he adds,, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 9 

44 must prove a general misfortune/' In 
the necessity of this conclusion I do not 
altogether concur : but upon that point I 
shall have occasion to speak at the close of 
my confessions, where I shall present the 
reader with the moral of my narrative. 



b 5 



PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS. 



These preliminary confessions, or intro- 
ductory narrative of the youthful adventures 
which laid the foundation of the writer's 
habit of opium-eating in after-life, it has 
been judged proper to premise, for three 
several reasons : 

1. As forestalling that question, and giv- 
ing it a satisfactory answer, which else 
would painfully obtrude itself in the course 
of the Opium-Confessions • — u How came 
any reasonable being to subject himself to 
such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur 
a captivity so servile, and knowingly to 
fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain V 9 
— a question, which, if not somewhere plau- 
sibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the 
indignation which it would be apt to raise 
as against an act of wanton folly, to inter- 
fere with that degree of sympathy which 



12 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

is necessary in any case to an author's 
purposes. 

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of 
that tremendous scenery which afterwards 
peopled the dreams of the opium-eater. 

3. As creating some previous interest of 
a personal sort in the confessing subject, 
apart from the matter of the confessions, 
which cannot fail to render the confessions 
themselves more interesting. If a man 
" whose talk is of oxen," should become an 
opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is 
not too dull to dream at all) — he will dream 
about oxen : whereas, in the case before 
him, the reader will find that the opium- 
eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher ; 
and accordingly, that the phantasmagoria 
of Ms dreams (waking or sleeping, day- 
dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one 
who in that character, 

Humani nihil a se alienum putat. 

For amongst the conditions which he 
deems indispensable to the sustaining of 
any claim to the title of philosopher, is not 
merely the possession of a superb intellect 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 13 

in its analytic functions (in which part of 
the pretension, however, England can for 
some generations show but few claimants ; 
at least, he is not aware of any known can- 
didate for this honour, who can be styled 
emphatically a subtle thinker, with the ex- 
ception of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in 
a narrower department of thought, with the 
recent illustrious exception * of David Ri- 
cardo) — but also such a constitution of 
the moral faculties, as shall give him an 

* A third exception might perhaps have been 
added : and my reason for not adding that exception 
is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile efforts 
that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed 
himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers 
having been all dedicated (on very excusable and very 
intelligible grounds, under the present direction of the 
popular mind in England) to criticism and the fine 
arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he 
is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a 
subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his 
mastery over philosophical subjects, that he has ob- 
viously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic 
education : he has not read Plato in his youth (which 
most likely was only his misfortune) ; but neither has 
he read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault). 



14 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

inner eye and power of intuition for the 
vision and the mysteries of our human 
nature : that constitution of faculties, in 
short, which (amongst all the generations 
of men that from the beginning of time have 
deployed into life, as it were, upon this 
planet) our English poets have possessed in 
the highest degree, — and Scottish # pro- 
fessors in the lowest. 

I have often been asked, how I first came 
to be a regular opium-eater ; and have suf- s 
fered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my 
acquaintance, from being reputed to have 
brought upon myself all the sufferings which 
I shall have to record, by a long course of 
indulgence in this practice purely for the 
sake of creating an artificial state of plea- 
surable excitement. This, however, is a 
misrepresentation of my case. True it is, 
that for nearly ten years I did occasionally 
take opium, for the sake of the exquisite 
pleasure it gave me : but, so long as I took 

* I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of 
whom indeed I know only one. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 15 

it with this view, I was effectually protected 
from all material bad consequences, by the 
necessity of interposing long intervals be- 
tween the several acts of indulgence, in 
order to renew the pleasurable sensations. 
It was not for the purpose of creating plea- 
sure, but of mitigating pain in the severest 
degree, that I first began to use opium as 
an article of daily diet. In the twenty- 
eighth year of my age, a most painful affec- 
tion of the stomach, which I had first ex-* 
perienced about ten years before, attacked 
me in great strength. This affection had 
originally been caused by extremities of 
hunger, suffered in my boyish days. Dur- 
ing the season of hope and redundant hap- 
piness which succeeded (that is, from 
eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered : 
for the three following years it had revived 
at intervals : and now, under unfavourable 
circumstances, from depression of spirits, it 
attacked me with a violence that yielded to 
no remedies but opium. As the youthful 
sufferings, which first produced this de- 
rangement of the stomach, were interesting 
in themselves, and in the circumstances 



16 CONFESSIONS 0*F AN 

that attended them, I shall here briefly re- 
trace them. 

My father died when I was about seven 
years old, and left me to the care of four 
guardians. I was sent to various schools, 
great and small ; and was very early distin- 
guished for my classical attainments, espe- 
cially for my knowledge of Greek, At 
thirteen, I wrote Greek with ease ; and at 
fifteen my command of that language was 
so great, that I not only composed Greek 
verses in lyric metres, but could converse 
in Greek fluently, and without embarrass- 
ment — an accomplishment which I have 
not since met with in any scholar of my 
times, and which, in my case, was owing to 
the practice of daily reading off the news- 
papers into the best Greek I could furnish 
extempore: for the necessity of ransacking 
my memory and invention, for all sorts and 
combinations of periphrastic expressions, as 
equivalents for modern ideas, images, rela- 
tions of things, &c. gave me a compass of 
diction which would never have been called 
out by a dull translation of moral essays, 
&c. " That boy," said one of my masters, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 17 

pointing the attention of a stranger to me, 
" that boy could harangue an Athenian 
mob, better than you or I could address an 
English one." He who honoured me with 
this eulogy, was a scholar, " and a ripe and 
good one :" and, of all my tutors, was the 
only one whom I loved or reverenced. Un- 
fortunately for me (and, as I afterwards 
learned, to this worthy man's great indigna- 
tion), I was transferred to the care, first of 
a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic, 
lest I should expose his ignorance ; and 
finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at 
the head of a great school on an ancient 
foundation. This man had been appointed 

to his situation by College, Oxford ; 

and was a sound, well-built scholar, but 
(like most men, whom I have known from 
that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. 
A miserable contrast he presented, in my 
eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favour- 
ite master: and, besides, he could not 
disguise from my hourly notice, the poverty 
and meagreness of his understanding. It 
is a bad thing for a boy to be, and to know 
himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in 



18 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

knowledge or in power of mind. This was 
the case, so far as regarded knowledge at 
least, not with myself only : for the two 
boys, who jointly with myself composed 
the first form, were better Grecians than 
the head-master, though not more elegant 
scholars, nor at all more accustomed to 
sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, 
I remember that we read Sophocles ; and it 
was -a constant matter of triumph to us, the 
learned triumvirate of the first form, to see 
our € Archididascalus' (as he loved to be 
called) conning our lesson before we went 
up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon 
and grammar, for blowing up and blasting 
(as it were) any difficulties he found in the 
choruses ; whilst we never condescended 
to open our books until the moment of 
going up, and were generally employed in 
writing epigrams upon his wig, or some 
such important matter. My two class- 
fellows were poor, and dependent for their 
future prospects at the university, on the 
recommendation of the head-master : but I, 
who had a small patrimonial property, the 
income of which was sufficient to support 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 19 

me at college, wished to be sent thither 
immediately. I made earnest representa- 
tions on the subject to my guardians, but 
all to no purpose. One, who was more 
reasonable, and had more knowledge of the 
world than the rest, lived at a distance : 
two of the other three resigned all their 
authority into the hands of the fourth ; and 
this fourth with whom I had to negotiate, 
was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, 
obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to 
his will. After a certain number of letters 
and personal interviews, I found that I had 
nothing to hope for, not even a compromise 
of the matter, from my guardian : uncondi- 
tional submission was what he demanded : 
and I prepared myself, therefore, for other 
measures. Summer was now coming on 
with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth- 
day was fast approaching ; after which day 
I had sworn within myself, that I would no 
longer be numbered amongst school-boys. 
Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote 
to a woman of high rank, who, though 
young herself, had known me from a child, 
and had latterly treated me with great dis- 



20 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

tinction, requesting that she would 6 lend' 
me five guineas. For upwards of a week 
no answer came ; and I was beginning to 
despond, when, at length, a servant put 
into my hands a double letter, with a coro- 
net on the seal. The letter was kind and 
obliging : the fair writer was on the sea- 
coast, and in that way the delay had arisen : 
she enclosed double of what I had asked, 
and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should 
never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin 
her. Now then, I was prepared for my 
scheme : ten guineas, added to about two 
which I had remaining from my pocket 
money, seemed to me sufficient for an inde- 
finite length of time : and at that happy 
age, if no definite boundary can be assigned 
to one's power, the spirit of hope and plea- 
sure makes it virtually infinite. 

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and 
what cannot often be said of his remarks, it 
is a very feeling one), that we never do any 
thing consciously for the last time (of things^ 
that is, which we have long been in the habit 
of doing) without sadness of heart. This 
truth I felt deeply, when 1 came to leave 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 21 

, a place which I did not love, and 

where I had not been happy. On the 

evening before I left for ever, I grieved 

when the ancient and lofty school-room 
resounded with the evening service, per- 
formed for the last time in my hearing ; and 
at night, when the muster-roll of names was 
called over, and mine (as usual) was called 
first, I stepped forward, and, passing the 
head master, who was standing by, I bowed 
to him, and looked earnestly in his face, 
thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, 
and in this world I shall not see him again." 
I was right : I never did see him again, nor 
ever shall. He looked at me complacently, 
smiled good-naturedly, returned my saluta- 
tion (or rather, my valediction), and we 
parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I 
could not reverence him intellectually: but 
he had been uniformly kind to me, and had 
allowed me many indulgences : and I grieved 
at the thought of the mortification I should 
inflict upon him. 

The morning came, which was to launch 
me into the world, and from which my whole 
succeeding life has, in many important points, 



22 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

taken its colouring. I lodged in the head 
master's house, and had been allowed, from 
my first entrance, the indulgence of a private 
room, which I used both as a sleeping-room 
and as a study. At half after three I rose, 
and gazed with deep emotion at the ancient 
towers of , u drestin earliest light," and 

beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre 
of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and 
immoveable in my purpose : but yet agitated 
by anticipation of uncertain danger and 
troubles; and, if I could have foreseen the 
hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction 
which soon fell upon me, well might I have 
been agitated. To this agitation the deep 
peace of the morning presented an affecting 
contrast, and in some degree a medicine. 
The silence was more profound than that 
of midnight: and to me the silence of a 
summer morning is more touching than all 
other silence, because, the light being broad 
eind strong, as that of noon-day at other 
seasons of the year, it seems to differ from 
perfect day, chiefly because man is not yet 
abroad ; and thus, the peace of nature, and 
of the innocent creatures of God, seems to 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 23 

be secure and deep, only so long as the pre« 
sence of man, and his restless and unquiet 
spirit, are not there to trouble its sanctity, 
I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, 
and lingered a little in the room. For the 
last year and a half this room had been my 
u pensive citadel :" here I had read and 
studied through all the hours of night : and, 
though true it was, that for the latter part 
of this time I, who was framed for love and 
gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and 
happiness, during the strife and fever of 
contention with my guardian ; yet, on the 
other hand, as a boy, so passionately fond 
of books, and dedicated to intellectual pur- 
suits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many 
happy hours in the midst of general dejec- 
tion. I wept as I looked round on the 
chair, hearth, writing-table, and other fami- 
liar objects, knowing too certainly, that I 
looked upon them for the last time. Whilst 
I write this, it is eighteen years ago ; and 
yet, at this moment, I see distinctly as if it 
were yesterday, the -lineaments and expres* 
sion of the object on which I fixed my 
parting gaze; it was a picture of the lovely 



24 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

, which hung over the mantle-piece ; 



the eyes and mouth of which were so beau- 
tiful, and the whole countenance so radiant 
with benignity, and divine tranquillity, that 
I had a thousand times laid down my pen, 
or my book, to gather consolation from it, 
as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst 
I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones of 

clock proclaimed that it was four 

o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed 
it, and then gently walked out, and closed 
the door for ever ! 

So blended and intertwisted in this life 
are occasions of laughter and of tears, 
that I cannot yet recal, without smiling, 
an incident which occurred at that time, and 
which had nearly put a stop to the imme- 
diate execution of my plan. I had a trunk 
of immense weight ; for, besides my clothes, 
it contained nearly all my library. The 
difficulty was to get this removed to a 
carrier's : my room was at an aerial elevation 
in the house, and (what was worse) the stair- 
case, which communicated with this angle 
of the building, was accessible only by a 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 25 

gallery, which passed the head master's 
chamber-door. I was a favourite with all 
the servants ; and, knowing that any of 
them would screen me, and act confiden- 
tially, I communicated my embarrassment to 
a groom of the head master's. The groom 
swore he would do any thing I wished ; and, 
when the time arrived, went up stairs to 
bring the trunk down. This I feared was 
beyond the strength of any one man : how- 
ever, the groom was a man — 

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies; 

and had a back as spacious as Salisbury 
plain. Accordingly he persisted in bringing 
down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting 
at the foot of the last flight, in anxiety for 
the event. For some time I heard him 
descending with slow and firm steps ; but, 
unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he 
drew near the dangerous quarter, within a 
few steps of the gallery, his foot slipped ; 
and the mighty burden falling from his 
shoulders, gained such increase of impetus 
at each step of the descent, that, on reaching 
c 



26 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

the bottom, it tumbled, or rather leaped, 
right across, with the noise of twenty devils, 
against the very bed-room door of the 
Archididascalus. My first thought was, 
that all was lost ; and that my only chance 
for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my 
baggage. However, on reflection, I deter- 
mined to abide the issue. The groom was 
in the utmost alarm, both on his own account 
and on mine : but, in spite of this, so irre- 
sistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in 
this unhappy contretems, taken possession of 
his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and 
canorous peal of laughter, that might have 
wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound 
of this resonant merriment, within the very 
ears of insulted authority, I could not 
myself forbear joining in it: subdued to 
this, not so much by the unhappy etourderie 
of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon 
the groom. We both expected, as a matter 

of course, that Dr. would sally out of 

his room : for, in general, if but a mouse 
stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his 
kennel. Strange to say, however, on this 
occasion, when the noise of laughter had 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 27 

ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be 

heard in the bed-room. Dr. had a 

painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping 
him awake, made his sleep, perhaps, when 
it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage 
from the silence, the groom hoisted his 
burden again, and accomplished the remain- 
der of his descent without accident. I 
waited until I saw the trunk placed on a 
wheel-barrow, and on its road to the car- 
rier's : then, u with Providence my guide," 
I set off on foot, — carrying a small parcel, 
with some articles of dress, under my arm ; 
a favourite English poet in one pocket; 
and a small 12mo. volume, containing about 
nine plays of Euripides, in the other. 

It had been my intention originally to 
proceed to Westmorland, both from the love 
I bore to that country, and on other per- 
sonal accounts. Accident, however, gave 
a different direction to my wanderings, and 
I bent my steps towards North Wales. 

After wandering about for some time in 
Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and Caernar- 
vonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat 

house in B . Here I might have staid 

c2 



28 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

with great comfort for many weeks; for 
provisions were cheap at B — — , from the 
scarcity of other markets for the surplus 
produce of a wide agricultural district. An 
accident, however, in which, perhaps, no 
offence was designed, drove me out to 
wander again. I know not whether my 
reader may have remarked, but I have often 
remarked, that the proudest class of people 
in England (or at any rate, the class whose 
pride is most apparent) are the families of 
bishops. Noblemen, and their children, 
carry about with them, in their very titles, a 
sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, 
their very names (and this applies also to 
the children of many untitled houses) are 
often, to the English ear, adequate expo- 
nents of high birth, or descent. Sackville, 
Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and 
scores of others, tell their own tale. Such 
persons, therefore, find every where a due 
sense of their claims already established, 
except among those who are ignorant of the 
world by virtue of their own obscurity : 
cC Not to know them, argues one's self un- 
known." Their manners take a suitable 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 29 

tone and colouring ; and, for once that they 
find it necessary to impress a sense of their 
Consequence upon others, they meet with 
a thousand occasions for moderating and 
tempering this sense by acts of courteous 
condescension. With the families of bishops 
it is otherwise : with them it is all up-hill 
work, to make known their pretensions : for 
the proportion of the episcopal bench, taken 
from noble families, is not at any time very 
large $ and the succession to these dignities 
is so rapid, that the public ear seldom has 
time to become familiar with them, unless 
where they are connected with some literary 
reputation. Hence it is, that the children 
of bishops carry about with them an austere 
and repulsive air, indicative of claims not 
generally acknowledged, a sort of noli me 
t anger e manner, nervously apprehensive of 
too familiar approach, and shrinking with 
the sensitiveness of a gouty man, from all 
contact with the ol ttqxxoi. Doubtless, a 
powerful understanding, or unusual good- 
ness of nature, will preserve a man from 
such weakness: but, in general, the truth 
of my representation will be acknowledged : 



30 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

pride, if not of deeper root in such families, 
appears, at least, more upon the surface of 
their manners. This spirit of manners natu- 
rally communicates itself to their domestics, 
and other dependents. Now, my landlady 
had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, in the 

family of the Bishop of ; and had but 

lately married away and " settled " (as such 
people express it) for life. In a little town 

like B , merely to have lived in the 

bishop's family, conferred some distinction : 
and my good landlady had rather more than 
her share of the pride I have noticed on that 
score. What " my lord" said, and what 
a my lord" did, how useful he was in par- 
liament, and how indispensable at Oxford, 
formed the daily burden of her talk. All 
this I bore very well: for I was too good- 
natured to laugh in any body's face, and I 
could make an ample allowance for the gar- 
rulity of an old servant. Of necessity, how- 
ever, I must have appeared in her eyes very 
inadequately impressed with the bishop's 
importance : and, perhaps, to punish me for 
my indifference, or possibly by accident, 
she one day repeated to me a conversation 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 31 

in which I was indirectly a party con- 
cerned. She had been to the palace to pay 
her respects to the family; and, dinner being 
over, was summoned into the dining-room. 
In giving an account of her household eco- 
nomy, she happened to mention that she 
had let her apartments. Thereupon the 
good bishop (it seemed) had taken occasion 
to caution her as to her selection of inmates : 
" for/' said he, " you must recollect, Betty, 
that this place is in the high road to the 
Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers, 
running away from their debts into England 
— and of English swindlers running away 
from their debts to the Isle of Man, are 
likely to take this place in their route." 
This advice was certainly not without rea- 
sonable grounds : but rather fitted to be 
stored up for Mrs. Betty's private medita- 
tions, than specially reported to me. What 
followed, however, was somewhat worse : — 
6i Oh, my lord," answered my landlady 
(according to her own representation of the 
matter), " I really don't think this young 

gentleman is a swindler ; because :" 

" You don't think me a swindler?" said I, 



32 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation i 
" for the future I shall spare you the trouble 
of thinking about it." And without delay 
I prepared for my departure. Some con- 
cessions the good woman seemed disposed 
to make : but a harsh and contemptuous 
expression, which I fear that I applied to 
the learned dignitary himself, roused her 
indignation in turn : and reconciliation then 
became impossible. I was, indeed, greatly 
irritated at the bishop's having suggested 
any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, 
against a person whom he had never seen : 
and I thought of letting him know my mind 
in Greek : which, at the same time that it 
would furnish some presumption that I was 
no swindler, would also (I hoped) compel 
the bishop to reply in the same language ; 
in which case, I doubted not to make it 
appear, that if I was not so rich as his 
lordship, I was a better Grecian. Calmer 
thoughts, however, drove this boyish design 
out of my mind : for 4 considered that the 
bishop was in the right to counsel an old 
servant; that he could not have designed 
that his advice should be reported to me ; 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 33 

and that the same coarseness of mind which 
had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at 
all, might have coloured it in a way more 
agreeable to her own style of thinking, than 
to the actual expressions of the worthy 
bishop. 

I left the lodgings the same hour ; and 
this turned out a very unfortunate occur- 
rence for me : because, living henceforward 
at inns, I was drained of my money very 
rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to 
short allowance ; that is, I could allow 
myself only one meal a day. From the 
keen appetite produced by constant exer- 
cise, and mountain air, acting on a youthful 
stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on 
this slender regimen ; for the single meal, 
which I could venture to order, was coffee 
or tea. Even this, however, was at length 
withdrawn : and afterwards, so long as I 
remained in Wales, I subsisted either on 
blackberries, hips, haws, &c, or on the 
casual hospitalities which I now and then 
received, in return for such little services as I 
had an opportunity of rendering. Sometimes 
I wrote letters of business for cottagers, who 
c5 



34 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

happened to have relatives in Liverpool, or 
in London : more often I wrote love-letters 
to their sweethearts for young women who 
had lived as servants in Shrewsbury, or 
other towns on the English border. On all 
such occasions I gave great satisfaction to 
my humble friends, and was generally treated 
with hospitality : and once, in particular, 
near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some 
such name), in a sequestered part of Merio- 
nethshire, I was entertained for upwards of 
three days by a family of young people, with 
an affectionate and fraternal kindness that 
left an impression upon my heart not yet 
impaired. The family consisted, at that 
time, of four sisters, and three brothers, all 
grown up, and all remarkable for elegance 
and delicacy of manners. So much beauty, 
and so much native good-breeding and 
refinement, I do not remember to have seen 
before or since in any cottage, except once 
or twice in Westmorland and Devonshire. 
They spoke English : an accomplishment 
not often met with in so many members of 
one family, especially in villages remote from 
the high road. Here I wrote, on my first 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 35 

introduction, a letter about prize-money, for 
one of the brothers, who had served on board 
an English man of war; and more privately, 
two love-letters for two of the sisters. They 
were both interesting looking girls, and one 
of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of 
their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, 
or rather giving me general instructions, it 
did not require any great penetration to 
discover that what they wished was, that 
their letters should be as kind as was con- 
sistent with proper maidenly pride. I con- 
trived so to temper my expressions, as to 
reconcile the gratification of both feelings: 
and they were as much pleased with the way 
in which I had expressed their thoughts, 
as (in their simplicity) they were astonished 
at my having so readily discovered them. 
The reception one meets with from the 
women of a family, generally determines the 
tenour of one's whole entertainment. In 
this case, I had discharged my confidential 
duties as secretary, so much to the general 
satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with 
my conversation, that I was pressed to stay 
with a cordiality which I had little inclina- 



36 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

tion to resist. I slept with the brothers, the 
only unoccupied bed standing in the apart- 
ment of the young women : but in all other 
points, they treated me with a respect not 
usually paid to purses as light as mine ; as 
if my scholarship were sufficient evidence, 
that I was of " gentle blood." Thus I lived 
with them for three days, and great part of 
a fourth : and, from the undiminished kind- 
ness which they continued to show me, I 
believe I might have staid with them up to 
this time, if their power had corresponded 
with their wishes. On the last morning, 
Tiowever, I perceived upon their counte- 
nances, as they sat at breakfast, the expres- 
sion of some unpleasant communication 
which was at hand ; and soon after one of 
the brothers explained to me, that their 
parents had gone, the day before my arrival, 
to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at 
Caernarvon, and were that day expected to 
return ; u and if they should not be so civil 
as they ought to be," he begged, on the 
part of all the young people, that I would 
not take it amiss. The parents returned, 
with churlish faces, and " Dym Sassenach " 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 37 

(no English), in answer to all my addresses. 
I saw how matters stood ; and so, taking an 
affectionate leave of my kind and interesting 
young hosts, I went my way. For, though 
they spoke warmly to their parents in my 
behalf, and often excused the manner of the 
old people, by saying, that it was u only 
their way/' yet I easily understood that my 
talent for writing love-letters would do as 
little to recommend me, with two grave 
sexagenarian Welsh Methodists, as my 
Greek Sapphics or Alcaics : and what had 
been hospitality, when offered to me with 
the gracious courtesy of my young friends, 
would become charity, when connected with 
the harsh demeanour of these old people. 
Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions 
about old age : unless powerfully counter- 
acted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is 
a miserable corrupter and blighter to the 
genial charities of the human heart. 

Soon after this, I contrived, by means 
which I must omit for want of room, to 
transfer myself to London. And now began 
the latter and fiercer stage of my long 
sufferings; without using a disproportionate 



38 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

expression I might say, of my agony. For 
I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, 
the physical anguish of hunger in various 
degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, perhaps, 
as ever any human being can have suffered 
who has survived it. I would not needlessly 
harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all 
that I endured: for extremities such as these, 
under any circumstances of heaviest mis- 
conduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, 
even in description, without a rueful pity 
that is painful to the natural goodness of 
the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on 
this occasion, to say, that a few fragments 
of bread from the breakfast-table of one 
individual (who supposed me to be ill, but 
did not know of my being in utter want), 
and these at uncertain intervals, constituted 
my whole support. During the former part 
of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, 
and always for the first two months in Lon- 
don) I was houseless, and very seldom slept 
under a roof. To this constant exposure to 
the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did 
not sink under my torments. Latterly, how- 
ever, when colder and more inclement wea- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 39 

ther came on, and when, from the length of 
my sufferings, I had begun to sink into a 
more languishing condition, it was, no doubt, 
fortunate for me, that the same person to 
whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed 
me to sleep in a large unoccupied house, of 
which he was tenant. Unoccupied, I call 
it, for there was no household or establish- 
ment in it ; nor any furniture, indeed, except 
a table, and a few chairs. But I found, on 
taking possession of my new quarters, that 
the house already contained one single 
inmate, a poor, friendless child, apparently 
ten years old ; but she seemed hunger- 
bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often 
make children look older than they are. 
From this forlorn child I learned, that she 
had slept and lived there alone, for some 
time before I came : and great joy the poor 
creature expressed, when she found that I 
was, in future, to be her companion through 
the hours of darkness. The house was 
large ; and, from the want of furniture, the 
noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing 
on the spacious staircase and hall ; and, 
amidst the real fleshly ills of cold, and, I 



40 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found 
leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from 
the self-created one of ghosts. I promised 
her protection against all ghosts whatso- 
ever ! but, alas ! I could offer her no other 
assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a 
bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow : 
but with no other covering than a sort of 
large horseman's cloak : afterwards, how- 
ever, we discovered, in a garret, an old 
sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some 
fragments of other articles, which added a 
little to our warmth. The poor child crept 
close to me for warmth, and for security 
against her ghostly enemies. When I was 
not more than usually ill, I took her into 
my arms, so that, in general, she was tole- 
rably warm, and often slept when I could 
not : for, during the last two months of my 
sufferings, I slept much in the day-time, 
and was apt to fall into transient dozings at 
all hours. But my sleep distressed me more 
than my watching : for, besides the tumul- 
tuousness of my dreams (which were only 
not so awful as those which I shall have to 
describe hereafter as produced by opium), 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 41 

my sleep was never more than what is called 
dog-sleep; so that I could hear myself moan- 
ing* and was often, as it seemed to me, 
wakened suddenly by my own voice; and, 
about this time, a hideous sensation began 
to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, 
which has since returned upon me, at dif- 
ferent periods of my life, viz. a sort of 
twitching (I know not where, but apparently 
about the region of the stomach), which 
compelled me violently to throw out my feet 
for the sake of relieving it. This sensation 
coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and 
the effort to relieve it constantly awaking 
me, at length I slept only from exhaustion ; 
and from increasing Weakness (as I said 
before) I was constantly falling asleep, and 
constantly awaking. Meantime, the master 
of the house sometimes came in upon us 
suddenly, and very early, sometimes not till 
ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was 
in constant fear of bailiffs : improving on the 
plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a 
different quarter of London ; and I observed 
that he never failed to examine, through a 
private window, the appearance of those 



42 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

who knocked at the door, before he would 
allow it to be opened. He breakfasted 
alone : indeed, his tea equipage would hardly 
have admitted of his hazarding an invitation 
to a second person — any more than the 
quantity of esculent materiel, which, for the 
most part, was little more than a roll, or a 
few biscuits, which he had bought on his 
road from the place where he had slept. 
Or, if he had asked a party, as I once learn- 
edly and facetiously observed to him-— the 
several members of it must have stood in the 
relation to each other (not sat in any rela- 
tion whatever) of succession, as the meta- 
physicians have it, and not of co-existence ; 
in the relation of the parts of time, and not 
of the parts of space. During his breakfast, 
I generally contrived a reason for lounging 
in ; and, with an air of as much indifference 
as I could assume, took up such fragments 
as he had left — sometimes, indeed, there 
were none at all. In doing this, I committed 
no robbery except upon the man himself, 
who was thus obliged (I believe) now and 
then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; 
for, as to the poor child, she was never 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 43 

admitted into his study (if I may give that 
name to his chief depository of parchments, 
law writings, &c); that room was to her the 
Blue-beard room of the house, being regu- 
larly locked on his departure to dinner, 
about six o'clock, which usually was his 
final departure for the night. Whether this 
child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. 



— — , or only a servant, I could not ascer- 
tain; she did not herself know; but certainly 
she was treated altogether as a menial ser- 
vant. No sooner did Mr. make his 

appearance, than she went below stairs, 
brushed his shoes, coat, 8tc. ; and, except 
when she was summoned to run an errand, 
she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus 
of the kitchens, &c. to the upper air, until 
my welcome knock at night called up her 
little trembling footsteps to the front door. 
Of her life during the day-time, however, I 
knew little but what I gathered from her 
own account at night; for, as soon as the 
hours of business commenced, I saw that 
my absence would be acceptable ; and, in 
general, therefore, I went off, and sat in the 
parks, or elsewhere, until night-fall. 



44 CONFESSIONS OF Aff 

But who, and what, meantime, was the 
master of the house himself? Reader, he 
was one of those anomalous practitioners in 
lower departments of the law, who — what 
shall I say? — who, on prudential reasons, 
or from necessity, deny themselves all in- 
dulgence in the luxury of too delicate a 
conscience : (a periphrasis which might be 
abridged considerably, but that I leave to 
the reader's taste :) in many walks of life, 
a conscience is a more expensive encum- 
brance, than a wife or a carriage ; and just 
as people talk of u laying down" their 

carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. 

had " laid down" his conscience for a time ; 
meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as 
he could afford it. The inner economy of 
such a man's daily life would present a 
most strange picture, if I could allow my- 
self to amuse the reader at his expense. 
Even with my limited opportunities for 
observing what went on, I saw many scenes 
of London intrigues, and complex chicanery, 
" cycle and epicycle, orb in orb/' at which 
I sometimes smile to this day — and at 
which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 45 

My situation, however, at that time, gave 
me little experience, in my own person, of 

any qualities in Mr. 's character but 

such as did him honour; and of his whole 
strange composition, I must forget every 
thing but that towards me he was obliging, 
and, to the extent of his power, generous. 

That power was not, indeed, very exten- 
sive ; however, in common with the rats, 
I sat rent free ; and, as Dr. Johnson has 
recorded, that he never but once in his life 
had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so 
let me be grateful, that on that single oc- 
casion I had as large a choice of apartments 
in a London mansion as I could possibly 
desire. Except the Blue-beard room, which 
the poor child believed to be haunted, all 
others, from the attics to the cellars, were 
at our service ; ci the world was all before 
us ;" and we pitched our tent for the night 
in any spot we chose. This house I have 
already described as a large one ; it stands 
in a conspicuous situation, and in a well- 
known part of London. Many of my 
readers will have passed it, I doubt not, 
within a few hours of reading this. For 



46 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

myself, I never fail to visit it when business 
draws me to London ; about ten o'clock, 
this very night, August 15, 1821, being my 
birth-day, — I turned aside from my evening 
walk, down Oxford-street, purposely to 
take a glance at it : it is now occupied by 
a respectable family; and, by the lights in 
the front drawing-room, I observed a do- 
mestic party, assembled perhaps at tea, and 
apparently cheerful and gay. Marvellous 
contrast in my eyes to the darkness — cold — 
silence — and desolation of that same house 
eighteen years ago, when its nightly occu- 
pants were one famishing scholar, and a 
neglected child. — Her, by the bye, in after 
years, I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart 
from her situation, she was not what would 
be called an interesting child : she was 
neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, 
nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, 
thank God ! even in those years I needed 
not the embellishments of novel-accessaries 
to conciliate my affections ; plain human 
nature, in its humblest and most homely 
apparel, was enough for me : and I loved 
the child because she was my partner in 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 47 

wretchedness. If she is now living, she is 
probably a mother, with children of her 
own ; but, as I have said, I could never 
trace her. 

This I regret, but another person there 
was at that time, whom I have since sought 
to trace with far deeper earnestness, and 
with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This 
person was a young woman, and one of that 
unhappy class who subsist upon the wages 
of prostitution. I feel no shame, nor have 
any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was 
then on familiar and friendly terms with 
many women in that unfortunate condition. 
The reader needs neither smile at this 
avowal, nor frown. For, not to remind my 
classical readers of the old Latin proverb — 
" Sine Cerere" &c. it may well be supposed 
that in the existing state of my purse, my 
connexion with such women could not have 
been an impure one. But the truth is, 
that at no time of my life have I been a 
person to hold myself polluted by the touch 
or approach of any creature that wore a 
human shape : on the contrary, from my 
very earliest youth it has been my pride to 



48 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all 
human beings, man, woman, and child, that 
chance might fling in my way : a practice 
which is friendly to the knowledge of 
human nature, to good feelings, and to that 
frankness of address which becomes a man 
who would be thought a philosopher. For 
a philosopher should not see with the eyes 
of the poor limitary creature, calling himself 
a man of the world, and filled with narrow 
and self-regarding prejudices of birth and 
education, but should look upon himself as 
a Catholic creature, and as standing in an 
equal relation to high and low — to educated 
and uneducated, to the guilty and the inno- 
cent. Being myself at that time of ne- 
cessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the 
streets, I naturally fell in more frequently 
with those female peripatetics who are 
technically called street-walkers. Many of 
these women had occasionally taken my 
part against watchmen who wished to drive 
me off the steps of houses where I was 
sitting. But one amongst them, the one on 
whose account I have at all introduced this 
subject — yet no! let me not class thee, oh 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 49 

noble-minded Ann , with that order 

of women ; let me find, if it be possible, 
some gentler name to designate the condi- 
tion of her to whose bounty and compass 
sion, ministering to my necessities when all 
the w r orld had forsaken me, I owe it that I 
am at this time alive. — For many weeks 
I had walked at nights with this poor friend- 
less girl up and down Oxford- street, or 
had rested with her on steps and under the 
shelter of porticos. She could not be so 
old as myself: she told me, indeed, that she 
had not completed her sixteenth year. By 
such questions as my interest about her 
prompted, I had gradually drawn forth her 
simple history. Hers was a case of ordi- 
nary occurrence (as I have since had reason 
to think), and one in which, if London 
beneficence had better adapted its arrange- 
ments to meet it, the power of the law 
might oftener be interposed to protect, and 
to avenge. But the stream of London 
charity flows in a channel which, though 
deep and mighty, is yet noiseless and un- 
derground ; not obvious or readily acces- 
sible to poor houseless wanderers : and it 

D 



50 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

cannot be denied that the outside air and 
frame-work of London society is harsh, 
cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however, 
I saw that part of her injuries might easily 
have been redressed ; and I urged her often 
and earnestly to lay her complaint before a 
magistrate: friendless as she was, I assured 
her that she would meet with immediate 
attention; and that English justice, which 
was no respecter of persons, would speedily 
and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian 
who had plundered her little property. She 
promised me often that she would ; but she 
delayed taking the steps I pointed out from 
time to time : for she was timid and de- 
jected to a degree which showed how deeply 
sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; 
and perhaps she thought justly that the 
most upright judge, and the most righteous 
tribunals, could do nothing to repair her 
heaviest wrongs. Something, however, 
would perhaps have been done : for it had 
been settled between us at length, but un- 
happily on the very last time but one that 
I was ever to see her, that in a day or two 
we should go together before a magistrate, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 51 

and that I should speak on her behalf. This 
little service it was destined, however, that 
I should never realize. Meantime, that 
which she rendered to me, and which was 
greater than I could ever have repaid her, 
was this : — One night, when we were pacing 
slowly along Oxford-street, and after a day 
when I had felt more than usually ill and 
faint, I requested her to turn off with me 
into Soho-square : thither we went ; and 
we sat down on the. steps of a house, which, 
to this hour, I never pass without a pang of 
grief, and an inner act of homage to the 
spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the 
noble action which she there performed. 
Suddenly, as we sat, I grew much worse : 
I had been leaning my head against her 
bosom ; and all at once I sank from her arms 
and fell backwards on the steps. From the 
sensations I then had, I felt an inner con- 
viction of the liveliest kind that without 
some powerful and reviving stimulus, I 
should either have died on the spot — or 
should at least have sunk to a point of ex- 
haustion from which all re-ascent under my 
friendless circumstances would soon have 
d2 



52 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

become hopeless. Then it was, at this 
crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan com- 
panion — who had herself met with little 
but injuries in this world — stretched out a 
saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, 
but without a moment's delay, she ran off 
into Oxford-street, and in less time than 
could be imagined, returned to me with a 
glass of port wine and spices, that acted 
upon my empty stomach (which at that 
time would have rejected all solid food) with 
an instantaneous power of restoration ; and 
for this glass the generous girl without a 
murmur paid out of her own humble purse 
at a time — be it remembered ! — when she 
had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the 
bare necessaries of life, and when she could 
have no reason to expect that I should ever 
be able to reimburse her. Oh ! youth- 
ful benefactress! how often in succeeding 
years, standing in solitary places, and thinks 
ing of thee with grief of heart and perfect 
love, how often have I wished that, as in 
ancient times the curse of a father was be- 
lieved to have a supernatural power, and to 
pursue its object with a fatal necessity of 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. S3 

self-fulfilment, — even so the benediction of 
a heart oppressed with gratitude, might have 
a like prerogative ; might have power given 
to it from above to chase — to haunt — to 
way-lay — to overtake — to pursue thee into 
the central darkness of a London brothel, or 
(if it were possible) into the darkness of the 
grave — there to awaken thee with an 
authentic message of peace and forgiveness, 
and of final reconciliation ! 

I do not often weep : for not only do my 
thoughts on subjects connected with the 
chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, 
descend a thousand fathoms " too deep for 
tears ;" not only does the sternness of my 
habits of thought present an antagonism to 
the feelings which prompt tears — wanting 
of necessity to those who, being protected 
usually by their levity from any tendency 
to meditative sorrow, would by that same 
levity be made incapable of resisting it on 
any casual access of such feelings : — but 
also, I believe that all minds which have 
contemplated such objects as deeply as 
I have done, must, for their own protection 
from utter despondency, have early encou- 



54 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

raged and cherished some tranquillizing 
belief as to the future balances and the 
hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. 
On these accounts, I am cheerful to this 
hour; and, as I have said, I do not often 
weep. Yet some feelings, though not 
deeper or more passionate, are more tender 
than others ; and often, when I walk at this 
time in Oxford-street by dreamy lamp-light, 
and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ 
which years ago solaced me and my dear 
companion (as I must always call her), 
I shed tears, and muse with myself at the 
mysterious dispensation which so suddenly 
and so critically separated us for ever. 
How it happened, the reader will understand 
from what remains of this introductory nar- 
ration. 

Soon after the period of the last incident 
I have recorded, I met, in Albemarle-street, 
a gentleman of his late majesty's household. 
This gentleman had received hospitalities, 
on different occasions, from my family: and 
he challenged me upon the strength of my 
family likeness. I did not attempt any dis- 
guise : I answered his questions ingenuously, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 55 

— and, on his pledging his word of honour 
that he would not betray me to ray guard- 
ians, I gave him an address to my friend the 
attorney's. The next day I received from 
him a 10/. Bank-note. The letter enclosing 
it was delivered with other letters of busi- 
ness to the attorney ; but, though his look 
and manner informed me that he suspected 
its contents, he gave it up to me honourably 
and without demur. 

This present, from the particular service 
to which it was applied, leads me naturally 
to speak of the purpose which had allured 
me up to London, and which I had been (to 
use a forensic word) soliciting from the first 
day of my arrival in London, to that of my 
final departure. 

In so mighty a world as London, it will 
surprise my readers that I should not have 
found some means of staving off the last 
extremities of penury : and it will strike 
them that two resources at least must have 
been open to me, — viz. either to seek as- 
sistance from the friends of my family, or 
to turn my youthful talents and attainments 
into some channel of pecuniary emolument 



56 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

As to the first course, I may observe, gene- 
rally, that what I dreaded beyond all other 
evils was the chance of being reclaimed by 
my guardians; not doubting that whatever 
power the law gave them would have been 
enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, 
to the extremity of forcibly restoring me 
to the school which I had quitted : a resto- 
ration which as it would in my eyes have 
been a dishonour, even if submitted to 
voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted 
from me in contempt and defiance of my 
known wishes and efforts, to have been a 
humiliation worse to me than death, and 
which would indeed have terminated in 
death. I was, therefore, shy enough of 
applying for assistance even in those quar- 
ters where I was sure of receiving it — at 
the risk of furnishing my guardians with 
any clue for recovering me. But, as to 
London in particular, though, doubtless, 
my father had in his life-time had many 
friends there, yet (as ten years had passed 
since his death) I remembered few of them 
even by name : and never having seen 
London before, except once for a few hours, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 57 

I knew not the address of even those few. 
To this mode of gaining help, therefore, ii> 
part the difficulty, but much more the para- 
mount fear which I have mentioned, ha- 
bitually indisposed me. In regard to the 
other mode, I now feel half inclined to join 
my reader in wondering that I should have 
overlooked it. As a corrector of Greek 
proofs (if in no other way), I might doubt* 
less have gained enough for my slender 
wants. Such an office as this I could have 
discharged with an exemplary and punctual 
accuracy that would soon have gained me 
the confidence of my employers. But it 
must not be forgotten that, even for such 
an office as this, it was necessary that I 
should first of all have an introduction to 
some respectable publisher : and this I had 
no means of obtaining. To say the truth, 
however, it had never once occurred to me 
to think of literary labours as a source of 
profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of 
obtaining money had ever occurred to me, 
but that of borrowing it on the strength of 
my future claims and expectations. This 
mode I sought by every avenue to compass, 
d 5 



58 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and amongst other persons I applied to a 
Jew named D . # 

* To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen 
months afterwards, I applied again on the same busi- 
ness ; and, dating at that time from a respectable col- 
lege, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention 
to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from 
any extravagance, or youthful levities (these my habits 
and the nature of my pleasures raised me far above), 
but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, 
who, when he found himself no longer able to prevent 
me from going to the university, had, as a parting token 
of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting 
me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at 
school — viz. 100Z. per annum. Upon this sum it was, 
in my time, barely possible to have lived in college; 
and not possible to a man who, though above the paltry 
affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, and 
without any expensive tastes, confided, nevertheless, 
rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the 
petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, 
became embarrassed : and at length, after a most volu- 
minous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, 
if I had leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse 
my readers), I was put in possession of the sum I asked 
for — on the " regular" terms of paying the Jew seven- 
teen and a half per cent., by way of annuity, on all the 
money furnished ; Israel, on his part, graciously resum- 
ing no more than about ninety guineas of the said 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 59 

To this Jew, and to other advertising 
money-lenders (some of whom were, I be- 
lieve, also Jews), I had introduced myself 
with an account of my expectations ; which 
account, on examining my father's will, at 
Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to 
be correct. The person there mentioned as 

the second son of , was found to have 

all the claims (or more than all) that I had 
stated : but one question still remained, 
which the faces of the Jews pretty signifi- 
cantly suggested, — was / that person? 
This doubt had never occurred to me as a 
possible one : I had rather feared, whenever 
my Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, 
that I might be too well known to be that 
person — and that some scheme might be 
passing in their minds for entrapping me, 

money, on account of an attorney's bill (for what ser- 
vices, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the 
siege of Jerusalem — at the building of the Second 
Temple — or on some earlier occasion, I have not yet 
been able to discover). How many perches this bill 
measured I really forget: but I still keep it in a cabinet 
of natural curiosities ; and sometime or other, I believe, 
I shall present it to the British Museum. 



60 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and selling me to my guardians. It was 
strange to me to find my own self, materia- 
liter considered (so I expressed it, for I doted 
on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused, 
or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my 
own self, formaliter considered. However, 
to satisfy their scruples, I took the only 
course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales, 
I had received various letters from young 
friends: these I produced : for I carried them 
constantly in my pocket — being, indeed, by 
this time, almost the only relics of my per- 
sonal incumbrances (excepting the clothes 
I wore) which I had not in one way or other 
disposed of. Most of these letters were 

from the Earl of , who was at that time 

my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. 
These letters were dated from Eton. I had 

also some from the Marquess of , his 

father, who, though absorbed in agricultural 
pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, 
and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs 
to be — still retained an affection for classical 
studies, and for youthful scholars. He had, 
accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, 
corresponded with me ; sometimes upon the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 61 

great improvements which he had made, or 
was meditating, in the counties of M — and 
SI — since I had been there; sometimes 
upon the merits of a Latin poet; at other 
times suggesting subjects to me, on which 
he wished me to write verses. 

On reading the letters, one of my Jewish 
friends agreed to furnish two or three hun- 
dred pounds on my personal security — pro- 
vided I could persuade the young Earl, who 
was, by the way, not older than myself, to 
guarantee the payment on our coming of 
age : the Jew's final object being, as I now 
suppose, not the trifling profit he could 
expect to make by me, but the prospect of 
establishing a connexion with my noble 
friend, whose immense expectations were 
well known to him. In pursuance of this 
proposal on the part of the Jew, about eight 
or nine days after I had received the 10/., I 
prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly 3/. 
of the money I had given to my money- 
lending friend, on his alleging that the 
stamps must be bought, in order that the 
writings might be preparing whilst I was 
away from London. I thought in my heart 



62 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

that he was lying ; but I did not wish to give 
him any excuse for charging his own delays 
upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my 
friend the attorney (who was connected with 
the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, 
indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished 
lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had 
employed in re-establishing (though in a 
very humble way) my dress. Of the remain- 
der I gave one quarter to Ann, meaning on 
my return to have divided with her whatever 
might remain. These arrangements made, — 
soon after six o'clock, on a dark winter 
evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, 
towards Piccadilly ; for it was my intention 
to go down as far as Salt-hill on the Bath or 
Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part 
of the town which has now all disappeared, 
so that I can no longer retrace its ancient 
boundaries : Swallow-street, I think, it was 
called. Having time enough before us* 
however, we bore away to the left until we 
came into Golden-square : there, near the 
corner of Sherrard-street, we sat down ; not 
wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of 
Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans 



ENGLISH OPIUM-PATER. 63 

some time before: and I now assured her 
again that she should share in my good 
fortune, if I met with any ; and that I would 
never forsake her, as soon as I had power to 
protect her. This I fully intended, as much 
from inclination as from a sense of duty : 
for, setting aside gratitude, which in any 
case must have made me her debtor for life, 
I loved her as affectionately as if she had 
been my sister : and at this moment, with 
sevenfold tenderness, from pity at witness- 
ing her extreme dejection. I had, appa- 
rently, most reason for dejection, because 1 
was leaving the saviour of my life : yet I, 
considering the shock my health had re- 
ceived, was cheerful and full of hope. She, 
on the contrary, who was parting with one 
who had little means of serving her, except 
by kindness and brotherly treatment, was 
overcome by sorrow ; so that, when I kissed 
her at our final farewell, she put her arms 
about my neck, and wept without speaking 
a word. I hoped to return in a week at 
farthest, and I agreed with her that on the 
fifth night from that, and every night after- 
wards, she should wait for me at six o'clock, 



64 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

near the bottom of Great Titchfield-street, 
which had been our customary haven, as it 
were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing 
each other in the great Mediterranean of 
Oxford-street. This, and other measures of 
precaution I took : one only I forgot. She 
had either never told me, or (as a matter of 
no great interest) I had forgotten, her sur- 
name. It is a general practice, indeed, with 
girls of humble rank in her unhappy condi- 
tion, not (as novel-reading women of higher 
pretensions) to style themselves — Miss 
Douglass, Miss Montague, &c. but simply by 
their Christian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, 
&c. Her surname, as the surest means of 
tracing her hereafter, I ought now to have 
inquired : but the truth is, having no reason 
to think that our meeting could, in conse- 
quence of a short interruption, be more 
difficult or uncertain than it had been for so 
many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment 
adverted to it as necessary, or placed it 
amongst my memoranda against this parting 
interview : and, my final anxieties being 
spent in comforting her with hopes, and in 
pressing upon her the necessity of getting 



ENGLISH OPltJM-EATER. 65 

some medicines for a violent cough and 
hoarseness with which she was troubled, I 
wholly forgot it until it was too late to 
recal her* 

It was past eight o'clock when I reached 
the Gloucester coffee-house : and, the Bristol 
mail being on the point of going off, I 
mounted on the outside. The fine fluent 
motion # of this mail soon laid me asleep : 
it is somewhat remarkable, that the first 
easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed 
for some months, was on the outside of a 
mail-coach — a bed which, at this day, I 
find rather an uneasy one. Connected with 
this sleep was a little incident, which served, 
as hundreds of others did at that time, to 
convince me how easily a man who has never 
been in any great distress, may pass through 
life without knowing, in his own person at 
least, any thing of the possible goodness of 
the human heart — or, as I must add with 
a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a 

* The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the king- 
dom — owing to the double advantage of an unusually 
good road, and of an extra sum for expenses subscribed 
by the Bristol merchants. 



66 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

curtain of manners is drawn over the features 
and expression of men's natures, that to the 
ordinary observer, the two extremities, and 
the infinite field of varieties which lie be- 
tween them, are all confounded — the vast 
and multitudinous compass of their several 
harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of 
differences expressed in the gamut or alpha- 
bet of elementary sounds. The case was 
this : for the first four or five miles from 
London, I annoyed my fellow-passenger on 
the roof by occasionally falling against him 
when the coach gave a lurch to his side ; 
and indeed, if the road had been less smooth 
and level than it is, I should have fallen off 
from weakness. Of this annoyance he com- 
plained heavily, as perhaps in the same cir- 
cumstances most people would ; he expressed 
his complaint, however, more morosely than 
the occasion seemed to warrant; and, if I 
had parted with him at that moment, I should 
have thought of him (if I had considered it 
worth while to think of him at all) as a surly 
and almost brutal fellow. However, I was 
conscious that I had given him some cause 
for complaint: and, therefore, I apologized 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 67 

to him, and assured him I would do what I 
could to avoid falling asleep for the future ; 
and, at the same time, in as few words as 
possible, I explained to him that I was ill 
and in a weak state from long suffering ; and 
that I could not afford at that time to take 
an inside place. The man's manner changed, 
upon hearing this explanation, in an instant : 
and when I next woke for a minute from the 
noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of 
my wishes and efforts I had fallen asleep 
again within two minutes from the time I 
had spoken to him), I found that he had put 
his arm round me to protect me from falling 
off: and for the rest of my journey he be- 
haved to me with the gentleness of a woman, 
so that, at length, I almost lay in his arms : 
and this was the more kind, as he could not 
have known that I was not going the whole 
way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, 
indeed, I did go rather farther than I 
intended : for so genial and refreshing was 
my sleep, that the next time after leaving 
Hounslow that I fully awoke, was upon the 
sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a 
post-office) ; and, on inquiry, I found that 



68 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

we had reached Maidenhead — six or seven 
miles, I think, a-head of Salt-hill. Here I 
alighted : and for the half minute that the 
mail stopped, I was entreated by my friendly 
companion (who, from the transient glimpse 
I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to 
me to be a gentleman's butler— or person of 
that rank) to go to bed without delay. This 
I promised, though with no intention of 
doing so : and in fact, I immediately set 
forward, or rather backward, on foot. It 
must then have been nearly midnight : but 
so slowly did I creep along, that I beard a 
clock in a cottage strike four before I turned 
down the lane from Slough to Eton. The 
air and the sleep had both refreshed me ; 
but I was weary nevertheless. I remember 
a thought (obvious enough, and which has 
been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) 
which gave me some consolation at that 
moment under my poverty. There had been 
some time before a murder committed on or 
near Hounslow-heath. I think I cannot be 
mistaken when 1 say that the name of the 
murdered person was Steele, and that he was 
the owner of a lavender plantation in that 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 69 

neighbourhood. Every step of my progress 
was bringing me nearer to the heath : and 
it naturally occurred to me that I and the 
accursed murderer, if he were that night 
abroad, might at every instant be uncon- 
sciously approaching each other through 
the darkness : in which case, said I, — sup- 
posing that I, instead of being (as indeed 
I am) little better than an outcast, — 

Lord of my learning and no land beside, 

were, like my friend, Lord — — , heir by 
general repute to 70,000/. per ann., what a 
panic should I be under at this moment 
about my throat ! — indeed, it was not likely 
that Lord should ever be in my situa- 
tion. But nevertheless, the spirit of the 
remark remains true — that vast power and 
possessions make a man shamefully afraid of 
dying : and I am convinced that many of the 
most intrepid adventurers, who, by fortu- 
nately being poor, enjoy the full use of their 
natural courage, would, if at the very instant 
of going into action news were brought to 
them that they had unexpectedly succeeded 
to an estate in England of 50,000/. a year, 



70 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

feel their dislike to bullets considerably 
sharpened # — and their efforts at perfect 
equanimity and self-possession proportion- 
ably difficult. So true it is, in the language 
of a wise man whose own experience had 
made him acquainted with both fortunes, 
that riches are better fitted — 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise. 

Paradise Regained. 

I dally with my subject because, to my- 
self, the remembrance of these times is 
profoundly interesting. But my reader shall 
not have any further cause to complain : for 
I now hasten to its close. — In the road 
between Slough and Eton, I fell asleep : 
and, just as the morning began to dawn, I 
was awakened by the voice of a man stand- 
ing over me and surveying me. I know not 
what he was : he was an ill-looking fellow — 

* It will be objected that many men, of the highest 
rank and wealth, have in our own day, as well as 
throughout our history, been amongst the foremost in 
courting danger in battle. True : but this is not the 
case supposed: long familiarity with power has to them 
deadened its effect and its attractions. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 71 

but not therefore of necessity an ill-meaning 
fellow : or, if he were, I suppose he thought 
that no person sleeping out-of-doors in 
winter could be worth robbing. In which 
conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, 
I beg to assure him, if he should be among 
my readers, that he was mistaken. After 
a slight remark he passed on : and I w r as 
not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled 
me to pass through Eton before people were 
generally up. The night had been heavy and 
lowering : but towards the morning it had 
changed to a slight frost: and the ground 
and the trees were now r covered with rime. 
I slipped through Eton unobserved ; washed 
myself, and, as far as possible, adjusted my 
dress at a little public-house in Windsor; 
and about eight o'clock went down towards 
Pote's. On my road I met some junior 
boys of whom I made inquiries : an Etonian 
is always a gentleman ; and, in spite of 
my shabby habiliments, they answered me 

civilly. My friend, Lord , was gone to 

the University of -. " Ibi omnis effusus 

labor ! " I had, however, other friends at 
Eton: but it is not to all who wear that 



72 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

name in prosperity that a man is willing to 
present himself in distress. On recollecting 
myself, however, I asked for the Earl of 
D — — , to whom, (though my acquaintance 
with him was not so intimate as with some 
others) I should not have shrunk from pre- 
senting myself under any circumstances. 
He was still at Eton, though I believe on the 
wing for Cambridge. I called, was received 
kindly, and asked to breakfast. 

Here let me stop for a moment to check 
my reader from any erroneous conclusions : 
because I have had occasion incidentally to 
speak of various patrician friends, it must 
not be supposed that I have myself any pre- 
tensions to rank or high blood. I thank 
God that I have not : — I am the son of a 
plain English merchant, esteemed during 
his life for his great integrity, and strongly 
attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was 
himself, anonymously, an author) : if he had 
lived, it was expected that he would have 
been very rich ; but, dying prematurely, he 
left no more than about 30,000/. amongst 
seven different claimants. My mother I 
may mention with honour, as still more 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 73 

highly gifted. For, though unpretending 
to the name and honours of a literary woman, 
I shall presume to call her (what many lite- 
rary women are not) an intellectual woman : 
and I believe that if ever her letters should 
be collected and published, they would be 
thought generally to exhibit as much strong 
and masculine sense, delivered in as pure 
" mother English," racy and fresh with 
idiomatic graces, as any in our language — 
hardly excepting those of Lady M. W. Mon- 
tague. — These are my honours of descent : 
I have no others : and I have thanked God 
sincerely that I have not, because, in my 
judgment, a station which raises a man too 
eminently above the level of his fellow- 
creatures is not the most favourable to 
moral, or to intellectual qualities. 

Lord D placed before me a most 

magnificent breakfast. It was really so ; 
but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent 
— from being the first regular meal, the first 
" good man's table," that I had sat down 
to for months. Strange to say, however, I 
could scarcely eat any thing. On the day 
when I first received my 10/. Bank-note, I 

E 



y 



74 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

had gone to a baker's shop and bought a 
couple of rolls : this very shop I had two 
months or six weeks before surveyed with 
an eagerness of desire which it was almost 
humiliating to me to recollect. I remem- 
bered the story about Otway ; and feared 
that there might be danger in eating too 
rapidly. But I had no need for alarm, my 
appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick 
before I had eaten half of what I had bought. 
This effect from eating what approached to 
a meal, I continued to feel for weeks : or, 
when I did not experience any nausea, part 
of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with 
acidity, sometimes immediately, and without 
any acidity. On the present occasion, at 

Lord D- ? s table, I found myself not at 

all better than usual : and, in the midst of 
luxuries, I had no appetite. I had, how- 
ever, unfortunately, at all times a craving 
for wine : I explained my situation, therefore, 
to Lord D , and gave him a short ac- 
count of my late sufferings, at which he 
expressed great compassion, and called for 
wine. This gave me a momentary relief 
and pleasure ; and on all occasions when I 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 75 

had an opportunity, I never failed to drink 
wine — which I worshipped then as I have 
since worshipped opium. I am convinced, 
however, that this indulgence in wine con- 
tributed to strengthen my malady ; for the 
tone of my stomach was apparently quite 
sunk ; but by a better regimen it might 
sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been 
revived. I hope that it was not from this 
love of wine that I lingered in the neigh- 
bourhood of my Eton friends : I persuaded 
myself then that it was from reluctance to 

ask of Lord D , on whom I was cot> 

scious I had not sufficient claims, the parti- 
cular service in quest of which I had come 
down to Eton. I was, however, unwilling 
to lose my journey, and — I asked it. Lord 

D », whose good nature was unbounded, 

and which, in regard to myself, had been 
measured rather by his compassion perhaps 
for my condition, and his knowledge of my 
intimacy with some of his relatives, than by 
an over rigorous inquiry into the extent of 
my own direct claims, faltered, neverthe- 
less, at this request. He acknowledged that 
he did not like to have any dealings with 
e 2 



76 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

money-lenders, and feared lest such, a trans- 
action might come to the ears of his con- 
nexions. Moreover, he doubted whether 
his signature, whose expectations were so 

much more bounded than those of , 

would avail with my unchristian friends. 
However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to 
mortify me by an absolute refusal : for after 
a little consideration, he promised, under 
certain conditions which he pointed out, to 

give his security. Lord D was at this 

time not eighteen years of age : but I have 
often doubted, on recollecting since the good 
sense and prudence which on this occasion 
he mingled with so much urbanity of manner 
(an urbanity which in him wore the grace of 
youthful sincerity), whether any statesman — 
the oldest and the most accomplished in 
diplomacy — could have acquitted himself 
better under the same circumstances. Most 
people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such 
a business, without surveying you with looks 
as austere and unpropitious as those of a 
Saracen's head. 

Recomforted by this promise, which was 
not quite equal to the best, but far above 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 77 

the worst that I had pictured to myself as 
possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to 
London three days after I had quitted it. 
And now I come to the end of my story : — 

the Jews did not approve of Lord D ^-'s 

terms ; whether they would in the end have 
acceded to them, and were only seeking 
time for making due inquiries, I know not ; 
but many delays were made — time passed 
on — the small fragment of my Bank-note 
had just melted away ; and before any con- 
clusion could have been put to the business, 
I must have relapsed into my former state 
of wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at 
this crisis, an opening was made, almost by 
accident, for reconciliation with my friends. 
I quitted London, in haste, for a remote 
part of England : after some time, I pro- 
ceeded to the university ; and it was not 
until many months had passed away, that I 
had it in my power again to revisit the 
ground which had become so interesting to 
me, and to this day remains so, as the chief 
scene of my youthful sufferings. 

Meantime, what had become of poor 
Anne? For her I have reserved my con- 



78 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

eluding words : according to our agreement, 
I sought her daily, and waited for her every 
night, so long as I staid in London, at the 
corner of Titchfield-street. I inquired for 
her of every one who was likely to know 
her; and, during the last hours of my stay 
in London, I put into activity every means 
of tracing her that my knowledge of London 
suggested, and the limited extent of my 
power made possible. The street where she 
had lodged I knew, but not the house ; and 
I remembered at last some account which 
she had given me of ill treatment from her 
landlord, which made it probable that she 
had quitted those lodgings before we parted. 
She had few acquaintance ; most people, 
besides, thought that the earnestness of my 
inquiries arose from motives which moved 
their laughter, or their slight regard ; and 
others, thinking I was in chase of a girl who 
had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally 
and excusably indisposed to give me any 
clue to her, if, indeed, they had any to give. 
Finally, as my despairing resource, on the 
day I left London I put into the hands of 
the only person who (I was sure) must know 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 79 

Anne by sight, from having been in com- 
pany with us once or twice, an address to 

in shire, at that time the residence 

of my family. But, to this hour, I have 
never heard a syllable about her. This, 
amongst such troubles as most men meet 
with in this life, has been my heaviest afflic- 
tion. — If she lived, doubtless we must have 
been sometimes in search of each other, at 
the very same moment, through the mighty 
labyrinths of London ; perhaps even within 
a few feet of each other — a barrier no wider 
in a London street, often amounting in the 
end to a separation for eternity ! During 
some years, I hoped that she did live ; and I 
suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical 
use of the word myriad, I may say that on 
my different visits to London, I have looked 
into many, many myriads of female faces, in 
the hope of meeting her. I should know 
her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her 
for a moment ; for, though not handsome, 
she had a sweet expression of countenance, 
and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the 
head. — I sought her, I have said, in hope. 
So it was for years; but now I should fear 



80 CONFESSIONS, &C. 

to see her ; and her cough, which grieved 
me when I parted with her, is now my 
consolation. I now wish to see her no 
longer ; but think of her, more gladly, as 
one long since laid in the grave ; in the 
grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen ; taken 
away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted 
out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, 
or the brutalities of ruffians had completed 
the ruin they had begun* 



CONFESSIONS 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 



PART II. 



So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted step- 
mother ! thou that listenest to the sighs of 
orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, 
at length I was dismissed from thee : the 
time was come at last that I no more should 
pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; 
no more should dream, and wake in captivity 
to the pangs of hunger. Successors, too 
many, to myself and Ann, have, doubtless, 
since trodden in our footsteps, — inheritors 
of our calamities : other orphans than Ann 
have sighed : tears have been shed by other 
children : and thou, Oxford-street, hast since, 
e 5 



82 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

doubtless, echoed to the groans of innu- 
merable hearts. For myself, however, the 
storm which I had outlived seemed to have 
been the pledge of a long fair-weather ; the 
premature sufferings which I had paid 
down, to have been accepted as a ransom 
for many years to come, as a price of long 
immunity from sorrow : and if again I 
walked in London, a solitary and contem- 
plative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked 
for the most part in serenity and peace of 
mind. And, although it is true that the 
calamities of my noviciate in London had 
struck root so deeply in my bodily consti- 
tution that afterwards they shot up and 
flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious 
umbrage that has overshadowed and dark- 
ened my latter years, yet these second 
assaults of suffering were met with a forti- 
tude more confirmed, with the resources of 
a maturer intellect, and with alleviations 
from sympathising affection — how deep 
and tender ! 

Thus, however, with whatsoever allevia- 
tions, years that were far asunder were 
bound together by subtle links of suffering 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 83 

derived from a common root. And herein 
I notice an instance of the short-sightedness 
of human desires, that, oftentimes on moon- 
light nights, during my first mournful abode 
in London, my consolation was (if such it 
could be thought) to gaze from Oxford- 
street up every avenue in succession which 
pierces through the heart of Marylebone to 
the fields and the woods ; and that, said I, 
travelling with my eyes up the long vistas 
which lay part in light and part in shade, 
"that is the road to the north, and therefore 

to 1 -, and if I had the wings of a 

dove, that way I would fly for comfort." 
Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blind- 
ness ; yet, even in that very northern re- 
gion it was, even in that very valley, nay, 
in that very house to which my erroneous 
wishes pointed, that this second birth of 
my sufferings began; and that they again 
threatened to besiege the citadel of life and 
hope. There it was, that for years I was 
persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly 
phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an 
Orestes : and in this unhappier than he, 
that sleep, which comes to all as a respite 



84 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and a restoration/ and to him especially, as 
a blessed # balm for his wounded heart and 
his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest 
scourge. Thus blind \Was I in my desires ; 
yet, if a veil interposes between the dim- 
sightedness of man and his future calami- 
ties, the same veil hides from him their 
alleviations ; and a grief which had not 
been feared is met by consolations which 
had not been hoped. I, therefore, who 
participated, as it were, in the troubles of 
Orestes (excepting only in his agitated con- 
science), participated no less in all his 
supports : my Eumenides, like his, were at 
my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through 
the curtains: but, watching, by, my. pillow, 
or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me 
company through the heavy watches of the 
night, sat my Electra: for thou, beloved 
M., dear companion of my later years, thou 
wast my Electra ! and neither in nobility of 
mind nor in long-suffering affection, wouldst 
permit that a Grecian sister should excel 
an English wife. For thou thoughtest not 

* flHXOV V7TV0V 0gXy»JTpoV ETTHtOygOV VO0-QV. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 85 

much to stoop to humble offices of kind- 
ness, and to servile # ministrations of ten- 
derest affection; — to wipe away for years 
the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, 
or to refresh the lips when parched and 
baked with fever ; nor, even when thy own 
peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy 
become infected with the spectacle of my 
dread contest with phantoms and shadowy 
enemies that oftentimes bade me " sleep no 
more ! " — not even then, didst thou utter a 
complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy 
angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service 
of love more than Electra did of old. For 
she too, though she was a Grecian woman, 
and the daughter of the king f of men, yet 
wept sometimes, and hid her face J in her 
robe. 

But these troubles are past: and thou 

* »$u bovXEV(j,a, a Eurip. Orest. 

X oppa, Qiur he-u bwXiwv. The scholar will know 
that throughout this passage I refer to the early scenes 
of the Orestes; one of the most beautiful exhibitions 
of the domestic affections which even the dramas of 
Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, it may 
be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening 



86 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

wilt read these records of a period so dolo- 
rous to us both as the legend of some 
hideous dream that can return no more. 
Meantime, I am again in London : and 
again I pace the terraces of Oxford-street 
by night : and oftentimes, when I am op- 
pressed by anxieties that demand all my 
philosophy and the comfort of thy presence 
to support, and yet remember that I am 
separated from thee by three hundred miles, 
and the length of three dreary months, — 
I look up the streets that run northwards 
from Oxford-street, upon moonlight nights, 
and recollect my youthful ejaculation of 
anguish; — and remembering that thou art 
sitting alone in that same valley, and mis- 
tress of that very house to which my heart 
turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, 
I think that, though blind indeed, and 
scattered to the winds of late, the prompt- 

of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his 
sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering 
conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted 
by the furies), and in circumstances of immediate 
danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard 
from nominal friends. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 87 

ings of my heart may yet have had reference 
to a remoter time, and may be justified if 
read in another meaning: — and, if I could 
allow myself to descend again to the impo- 
tent wishes of childhood, I should again 
say to myself, as I look to the north, " Oh, 
that I had the wings of a dove — " and with 
how just a confidence in thy good and 
gracious nature might I add the other half 
of my early ejaculation — "And that way 
I would fly for comfort." 

THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM. 

It is so long since I first took opium, that 
if it had been a trifling incident in my life, 
I might have forgotten its date : but cardi- 
nal events are not to be forgotten ; and from 
circumstances connected with it, I remember 
that it must be referred to the autumn of 
1804. During that season I was in London, 
having come thither for the first time since 
my entrance at college. And my intro- 
duction to opium arose in the following way. 
From an early age I had been accustomed 
to wash my head in cold water at least once 



88 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

a day: being suddenly seized with tooth- 
ache, I attributed it to some relaxation 
caused by an accidental intermission of 
that practice ; jumped out of bed ; plunged 
my head into a basin of cold water ; and 
with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The 
next morning, as I need hardly say, I 
awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains 
of the head and face, from which I had 
hardly any respite for about twenty days. 
On the tw T enty-first day, I think it was, 
and on a Sunday, that I went out into the 
streets; rather to run away, if possible, 
from my torments, than with any distinct 
purpose. By accident I met a college 
acquaintance who recommended opium. 
Opium ! dread agent of unimaginable plea- 
sure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had 
of manna or of ambrosia, but no further : 
how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! 
what solemn chords does it now strike upon 
my heart ! what heart-quaking vibrations 
of sad and happy remembrances ! Reverting 
for a moment to these, I feel a mystic 
importance attached to the minutest circum- 
stances connected with the place and the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 89 

time, and the man (if man he was) that first 
laid open to me the Paradise of Opium- 
eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet 
and cheerless : and a duller spectacle this 
earth of ours has not to show than a rainy 
Sunday in London. My road homewards 
lay through Oxford-street; and near "the 
stately Pantheon," (as Mr. Wordsworth has 
obligingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. 
The druggist, unconscious minister of ce- 
lestial pleasures ! — as if in sympathy with 
the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, 
just as any mortal druggist might be ex- 
pected to look on a Sunday : and, when I 
asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it 
to me as any other man might do : and 
furthermore, out of my shilling, returned 
me what seemed to be real copper half- 
pence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. 
Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of 
humanity, he has ever since existed in my 
mind as the beatific vision of an immortal 
druggist, sent down to earth on a special 
mission to myself. And it confirms me in 
this way of considering him, that, when I 
next came up to London, I sought him 



90 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

near the stately Pantheon, and found hina 
not: and thus to me, who knew not his 
name (if indeed he had one) he seemed 
rather to have vanished from Oxford-street 
than to have removed in any bodily fashion. 
The reader may choose to think of him as, 
possibly, no more than a sublunary drug- 
gist : it may be so : but my faith is better : 
I believe him to have evanesced,^ or evapor- 
ated. So unwillingly would I connect any 
mortal remembrances with that hour, and 
place, and creature, that first brought me 
acquainted with the celestial drug. 

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be sup- 

* Evanesced : — this way of going off the stage of 
life appears to have been well known in the 17th cen- 
tury, but at that time to have been considered a pecu- 
liar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be 
allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686, a poet 
of rather ominous name (and who, by the by, did ample 
justice to his name), viz. Mr. Flat-man, in speaking of 
the death of Charles IT. expresses his surprise that any 
prince should commit so absurd an act as dying; be- 
cause, says he, 

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear. 
They should abscond, that is, into the other world. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 91 

posed that I lost not a moment in taking 
the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily- 
ignorant of the whole art and mystery of 
opium-taking : and, what I took, I took 
under every disadvantage. But I took it : — 
and in an hour, oh! heavens ! what a revul- 
sion ! what an upheaving, from its lowest 
depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoca- 
lypse of the world within me ! That my 
pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my 
eyes : — this negative effect was swallowed 
up in the immensity of those positive effects 
which had opened before me — in the abyss 
of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. 
Here was a panacea — a Qagpoutov vrwEvOeg for 
all human woes : here was the secret of 
happiness, about which philosophers had 
disputed for so many ages, at once disco- 
vered : happiness might now be bought 
for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat 
pocket: portable ecstasies might be had 
corked up in a pint bottle : and peace of 
mind could be sent down in gallons by the 
mail coach. But, if I talk in this way, the 
reader will think I am laughing : and I can 
assure him, that nobody will laugh long 



92 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

who deals much with opium : its pleasures 
even are of a grave and solemn complexion ; 
and in his happiest state, the opium-eater 
cannot present himself in the character of 
V Allegro: even then, he speaks and thinks 
as becomes 11 Penseroso. Nevertheless, I 
have a very reprehensible way of jesting at 
times in the midst of my own misery : and, 
unless when I am checked by some more 
powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be 
guilty of this indecent practice even in these 
annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader 
must allow a little to my infirm nature in 
this respect : and with a few indulgences of 
that sort, I shall endeavour to be as grave, 
if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so 
anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy 
as it is falsely reputed. 

And, first, one word with respect to its 
bodily effects : for upon all that has been 
hitherto written on the subject of opium, 
whether by travellers in Turkey (who may 
plead their privilege of lying as an old 
immemorial right), or by professors of me- 
dicine, writing ex cathedra, — I have but one 
emphatic criticism to pronounce — Lies ! 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 93 

lies ! lies ! I remember once, in passing 
a book-stall, to have caught these words 
from a page of some satiric author: — u By 
this time I became convinced that the 
London newspapers spoke truth at least 
twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, 
and might safely be depended upon for 

the list of bankrupts." In like 

manner, I do by no means deny that some 
truths have been delivered to the world in 
regard to opium : thus it has been repeat- 
edly affirmed by the learned, that opium is 
a dusky brown in colour ; and this, take 
notice, I grant: secondly, that it is rather 
dear ; which also I grant : for in my time, 
East-India opium has been three guineas a 
pound, and Turkey eight : and, thirdly, that 
if you eat a good deal of it, most probably 
you must do what is particularly dis- 
agreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. 
die # . These weighty propositions are, all 

* Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to 
have doubted: for in a pirated edition of Buchan's 
Domestic Medicine, which I once saw in the hands of a 
farmer's wife who was studying it for the benefit of her 
health, the doctor was made to say — ' Be particularly 



94 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and singular, true : I cannot gainsay them : 
and truth ever was, and will be, commend- 
able. But in these three theorems, I believe 
we have exhausted the stock of knowledge 
as yet accumulated by man on the subject 
of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, 
as there seems to be room for further dis- 
cover] es, stand aside, and allow me to come 
forward and lecture on this matter. 

First, then, it is not so much affirmed as 
taken for granted, by all who ever mention 
opium, formally or incidentally, that it does, 
or can, produce intoxication. Now, reader, 
assure yourself, meo periculo, that no quantity 
of opium ever did, or could intoxicate. 
As to the tincture of opium (commonly 
called laudanum) that might certainly in- 
toxicate if a man could bear to take enough 
of it; but why? because it contains so 
much proof spirit, and not because it con- 
tains so much opium. But crude opium, I 



careful never to take above five-and-twenty ounces of 
laudanum at once;' the true reading being probably 
fi>e and twenty drops, which are held equal to about 
one grain of crude opium. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 95 

affirm peremptorily, is incapable of produc- 
ing any state of body at all resembling that 
which is produced by alcohol: and not in 
degree only incapable, but even in kind: it 
is not in the quantity of its effects merely; 
but in the quality, that it differs altogether. 
The pleasure given by wine is always 
mounting, and tending to a crisis, after 
which it declines : that from opium, when 
once generated, is stationary for eight or 
ten hours : the first, to borrow a technical 
distinction from medicine, is a case of acute 
— the second, of chronic pleasure : the one 
is a flame, the other a steady and equable 
glow. But the main distinction lies in this, 
that whereas wine disorders the mental 
faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken 
in a proper manner), introduces amongst 
them the most exquisite order, legislation, 
and harmony. Wine robs a man of his 
self-possession : opium greatly invigorates 
it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judg- 
ment, and gives a preternatural brightness, 
and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and 
the admirations, the loves and the hatreds, 
of the drinker: opium, on the contrary, 



96 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

communicates serenity and equipoise to all 
the faculties, active or passive : and with 
respect to the temper and moral feelings in 
general, it gives simply that sort of vital 
warmth which is approved by the judgment, 
and which would probably always accom- 
pany a bodily constitution of primeval or 
antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, 
opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the 
heart and the benevolent affections : but 
then, with this remarkable difference, that 
in the sudden development of kind-hearted- 
ness which accompanies inebriation, there is 
always more or less of a maudlin character, 
which exposes it to the contempt of the by- 
stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal 
friendship, and shed tears — no mortal 
knows why : and the sensual creature is 
clearly uppermost. But the expansion of 
the benigner feelings, incident to opium, is 
no febrile access, but a healthy restoration 
to that state which the mind would natu- 
rally recover upon the removal of any deep- 
seated irritation of pain that had disturbed 
and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart 
originally just and good. True it is, that 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 97 

even wine, up to a certain point, and with 
certain men, rather tends to exalt and to 
steady the intellect: I myself, who have 
never been a great wine-drinker, used to 
find that half a dozen glasses of wine advan- 
tageously affected the faculties — brightened 
and intensified the consciousness — and 
gave to the mind a feeling of being " pon- 
deribus librata suis :" and certainly it is 
most absurdly said, in popular language, of 
any man, that he is disguised in liquor : for, 
on the contrary, most men are disguised by 
sobriety ; and it is when they are drinking 
(as some old gentleman says in Athenacus), 
that men eauroug i/tpavt&uo-iv oiTiveg zlaiv — 
display themselves in their true complexion 
of character ; which surely is not disguising 
themselves. But still, wine constantly 
leads a man to the brink of absurdity 
and extravagance ; and, beyond a certain 
point, it is sure to volatilize and to disperse 
the intellectual energies : whereas opium 
always seems to compose what had been 
agitated, and to concentrate what had been 
distracted. In short, to sum up all in one 
word, a man who is inebriated, or tending 

F 



98 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a 
condition which calls up into supremacy 
the merely human, too often the brutal, 
part of his nature : but the opium-eater (I 
speak of him who is not suffering from any 
disease, or other remote effects of opium,) 
feels that the diviner part of his nature is 
paramount ; that is, the moral affections 
are in a &tate of cloudless serenity ; and 
over all is the great light of the majestic 
intellect. 

This is the doctrine of the true church on 
the subject of opium: of which church I 
acknowledge myself to be the only member 
— the alpha and the omega : but then it is 
to be recollected, that I speak from the 
ground of a large and profound personal 
experience : whereas most of the unscien- 
tific # authors who have at all treated of 

* Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c. who 
show sufficiently by their stupidity that they never 
held any intercourse with opium, I must caution my 
readers specially against the brilliant author of " Ana- 
stasius." This gentleman, whose wit would lead one 
to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impos- 
sible to consider him in that character from the griev- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 99 

opium, and even of those who have written 
expressly on the materia medica, make it 
evident, from the horror they express of it, 
that their experimental knowledge of its 
action is none at all. I will, however, can- 



ous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects, at 
p. 215 — V7, of vol. i. — Upon consideration, it must 
appear such to the author himself: for, waiving the 
errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) 
are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself 
admit, that an old gentleman " with a snow-white 
beard," who eats " ample doses of opium/' and is yet 
able to deliver what is meant and received as very 
weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is 
but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills 
people prematurely, or sends them into a mad-house. 
But, for my part, I see into this old gentleman and 
his motives : the fact is, he was enamoured of u the 
little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" which 
Anastasius carried about him ; and no way of obtain- 
ing it so safe and so feasible occurred, as that of 
frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the 
by, are none of the strongest). This commentary 
throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves 
it as a story: for the old gentleman's speech, consi- 
dered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd : but, 
considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excel- 
lently. 

f2 



100 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

didly acknowledge that I have met with 
one person who bore evidence to its intoxi- 
cating power, such as staggered my own 
incredulity : for he was a surgeon, and had 
himself taken opium largely. I happened 
to say to him, that his enemies (as I had 
heard) charged him with talking nonsense 
on politics, and that his friends apologized 
for him, by suggesting that he was con- 
stantly in a state of intoxication from 
opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not 
prima facie, and of necessity, an absurd one: 
but the defence is. To my surprise, how- 
ever, he insisted that both his enemies and 
his friends were in the right : " I will main- 
tain," said he, " that I do talk nonsense ; 
and secondly, I will maintain that I do not 
talk nonsense upon principle, or with any 
view to profit, but solely and simply, said 
he, solely and simply, — solely and simply, 
(repeating it three times over), because I 
am drunk w T ith opium ; and that daily." 
I replied that, as to the allegation of his 
enemies, as it seemed to be established 
upon such respectable testimony, seeing 
that the three parties concerned all agreed 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 101 

in it, it did not become me to question it ; 
but the defence set up I must demur to. 
He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to 
lay down his reasons ; but it seemed to me 
so impolite to pursue an argument which 
must have presumed a man mistaken in a 
point belonging to his own profession, that 
I did not press him even when his course 
of argument seemed open to objection : not 
to mention that a man who talks nonsense, 
even though " with no view to profit," is 
not altogether the most agreeable partner 
in a dispute, whether as opponent or re- 
spondent. I confess, however, that the 
authority of a surgeon, and one who was 
reputed a good one, may seem a weighty 
one to my prejudice : but still I must plead 
my experience, which was greater than his 
greatest by 7000 drops a day ; and, though 
it was not possible to suppose a medical 
man unacquainted with the characteristic 
symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet 
struck me that he might proceed on a logical 
error of using the word intoxication with 
too great latitude, and extending it generi- 
cally to all modes of nervous excitement, 



102 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

instead of restricting it as the expression 
for a specific sort of excitement, connected 
with certain diagnostics. Some people 
have maintained, in my hearing, that they 
had been drunk upon green tea : and a 
medical student in London, for whose 
knowledge in his profession I have reason 
to feel great respect, assured me, the other 
day, that a patient, in recovering from an 
illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak. 

Having dwelt so much on this first and 
leading error, in respect to opium, I shall 
notice very briefly a second and a third ; 
which are, that the elevation of spirits pro- 
duced by opium is necessarily followed by 
a proportionate depression, and that the 
natural and even immediate consequence of 
opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and 
mental. The first of these errors I shall 
content myself with simply denying ; assur- 
ing my reader, that for ten years, during 
which I took opium at intervals, the day 
succeeding to that on which I allowed 
myself this luxury was always a day of 
unusually good spirits. 

With respect to the torpor supposed to 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 103 

follow, or rather (if we were to credit the 
numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) 
to accompany the practice of opium-eating > 
I deny that also. Certainly, opium is 
classed under the head of narcotics ; and 
some such effect it may produce in the end : 
but the primary effects of opium are always, 
and in the highest degree, to excite and 
stimulate the system : this first stage of its 
action always lasted with me, during my 
noviciate, for upwards of eight hours ; so 
that it must be the fault of the opium-eater 
himself if he does not so time his exhibition 
of the dose (to speak medically) as that the 
whole weight of its narcotic influence may 
descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium- 
eaters it seems, are absurd enough to sit, 
like so many equestrian statues, on logs of 
wood as stupid as themselves. But that 
the reader may judge of the degree in which 
opium is likely to stupify the faculties of an 
Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the 
question illustratively, rather than argu- 
mentatively) describe the way in which I 
myself often passed an opium evening in 
London, during the period between 1804 and 



104 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

1812. It will be seen, that at least opium 
did not move me to seek solitude, and much 
less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of 
self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I 
give this account at the risk of being pro- 
nounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary : but 
I regard that little : I must desire my reader 
to bear in mind, that I was a hard student, 
and at severe studies for all the rest of my 
time : and certainly I had a right occasion- 
ally to relaxations as well as other people : 
these, however, I allowed myself but seldom. 

The late Duke of used to say, €e Next 

Friday, by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose 
to be drunk : " and in like manner I used to 
fix beforehand how often, within a given 
time, and when, I would commit a debauch 
of opium. This was seldom more than once 
in three weeks : for at that time I could not 
have ventured to call every day (as I did 
afterwards) for " a glass of laudanum negus, 
tvarm, and without sugar." No : as I have 
said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, 
more than once in three weeks : this was 
usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night ; 
my reason for which was this. In those days 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 10& 

Grassini sang at the Opera : and her voice 
was delightful to me beyond all that I had 
ever heard. I know not what may be the 
state of the Opera-house now, having never 
been within its walls for seven or eight years, 
but at that time it was by much the most 
pleasant place of public resort in London for 
passing an evening. Five shillings admitted 
one to the gallery, which was subject to far 
less annoyance than the pit of the theatres : 
the orchestra was distinguished by its sweet 
and melodious grandeur from all English 
orchestras, the composition of which, I con- 
fess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the 
predominance of the clangorous instruments, 
and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The 
choruses were divine to hear: and when 
Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she 
often did, and poured forth her passionate 
soul as Andromache, at the tomb of Hector, 
&c. I question whether any Turk, of all 
that ever entered the paradise of opium- 
eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. 
But, indeed, I honour the Barbarians too 
much by supposing them capable of any 
pleasures approaching to the intellectual 

- 



106 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

ones of an Englishman. For music is an 
intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according 
to the temperament of him who hears it. 
And, by the by, with the exception of the 
fine extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth 
Night, I do not recollect more than one 
thing said adequately on the subject of 
music in all literature : it is a passage in the 
Religio Medici* of Sir T. Brown; and, 
though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, 
has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it 
points to the true theory of musical effects. 
The mistake of most people is to sup- 
pose that it is by the ear, they communi- 
cate with music, and, therefore, that they 
are purely passive to its effects. But this is 
not so : it is by the reaction of the mind 
upon the notices of the ear, (the matter 
coming by the senses, the form from the 
mind,) that the pleasure is constructed : and 
therefore it is that people of equally good 
ear differ so much in this point from one 

* I have not the book at this moment to consult : 
but I think the passage begins — "And even that tavern 
music, which makes one man merry, another mad, in 
me strikes a deep fit of devotion/' &c. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 107 

another. Now opium, by greatly increasing 
the activity of the mind generally, increases, 
of necessity, that particular mode of its 
activity by which we are able to construct 
out of the raw material of organic sound an 
elaborate intellectual pleasure. But, says a 
friend, a succession of musical sounds is to 
me like a collection of Arabic characters : I 
can attach no ideas to them ! Ideas ! my 
good sir? there is no occasion for them : all 
that class of ideas, which can be available 
in such a case, has a language of representa- 
tive feelings. But this is a subject foreign 
to my present purposes : it is sufficient to 
say, that a chorus, &c. of elaborate harmony, 
displayed before me, as in a piece of arras 
work, the whole of my past life — not as if 
recalled by an act of memory, but as if 
present and incarnated in the music : no 
longer painful to dwell upon : but the detail 
of its incidents removed, or blended in some 
hazy abstraction ; and its passions exalted, 
spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to 
be had for five shillings. And over and 
above the music of the stage and the orches- 
tra, I had all around me, in the intervals of 



108 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

the performance, the music of the Italian 
language talked by Italian women : for the 
gallery was usually crowded with Italians : 
and I listened with a pleasure such as that 
with which Weld the traveller lay and 
listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter 
of Indian women ; for the less you under- 
stand of a language, the more sensible you 
are to the melody or harshness of its sounds : 
for such a purpose, therefore, it was an 
advantage to me that I was a poor Italian 
scholar, reading it but little, and not speak- 
ing it at all, nor understanding a tenth part 
of what I heard spoken. 

These were my Opera pleasures : but 
another pleasure I had which, as it could be 
had only on a Saturday night, occasionally 
struggled with my love of the Opera; for, at 
that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the 
regular Opera nights. On this subject I 
am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but, I 
can assure the reader, not at all more so 
that Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many 
other biographers and auto-biographers of 
fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, 
was to be had only on a Saturday night. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 109 

What then was Saturday night to me more 
than any other night? I had no labours 
that I rested from ^ no wages to receive: 
what needed I to care for Saturday night, 
more than as it was a summons to hear 
Grassini ? True, most logical reader : what 
you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was 
and is, that, whereas different men throw 
their feelings into different channels, and 
most are apt to show their interest in the 
concerns of the poor, chiefly by sympathy, 
expressed in some shape or other, with their 
distresses and sorrows, I, at that time, was 
disposed to express my interest by sympa- 
thising^Hth their pleasures. The pains of 
poverty I had lately seen too much of; more 
than I wished to remember: but the plea- 
sures of the poor, their consolations of 
spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, 
can never become oppressive to contem- 
plate. Now Saturday night is the season 
for the chief, regular, and periodic return of 
rest to the poor : in this point the most 
hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a com- 
mon link of brotherhood : almost all Christ- 
endom rests from its labours. It is a rest 



110 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

introductory to another rest : and divided 
by a whole day and two nights from the 
renewal of toil. On this account I feel 
always, on a Saturday night, as though I 
also were released from some yoke of labour, 
had some wages to receive, and some luxury 
of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, 
of witnessing, upon as large a scale as pos- 
sible, a spectacle with which my sympathy 
was so entire, I used often, on Saturday 
nights, after I had taken opium, to wander 
forth, without much regarding the direction 
or the distance, to all the markets, and other 
parts of London, to which the poor resort on 
a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. 
Many a family party, consisting of a man, 
his wife, and sometimes one or two of his 
children, have I listened to, as they stood 
consulting on their ways and means, or the 
strength of their exchequer, x>r the price of 
household articles. Gradually I became 
familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, 
and their opinions. Sometimes there might 
be heard murmurs of discontent : but far 
oftener expressions on the countenance, or 
uttered in words, of patience, hope, and 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Ill 

tranquillity. And taken generally, I must 
say, that, in this point at least, the poor are 
far more philosophic than the rich — that 
they show a more ready and cheerful sub- 
mission to what they consider as irremedi- 
able evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever 
I saw occasion, or could do it without 
appearing to be intrusive, I joined their 
parties ; and gave my opinion upon the 
matter in discussion, which, if not always 
judicious, was always received indulgently. 
If wages were a little higher, or expected to 
be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or 
it was reported that onions and butter were 
expected to fall, I was glad : yet, if the con- 
trary were true, I drew from opium some 
means of consoling myself. For opium 
(like the bee, that extracts its materials in- 
discriminately from roses and from the soot 
of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a 
compliance with the master key. Some of 
these rambles led me to great distances : for 
an opium-eater is too happy to observe the 
motion of time. And sometimes in my 
attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical 
principles, by fixing my eye on the pole- 



112 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

star, and seeking ambitiously for a north- 
west passage, instead of circumnavigating 
all the capes and headlands I had doubled 
in my outward voyage, I came suddenly 
upon such knotty problems of alleys, such 
enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's rid- 
dles of streets without thoroughfares, as 
must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of 
porters, and confound the intellects of hack- 
ney-coachmen. I could almost have believed, 
at times, that I must be the first discoverer 
of some of these terra incognita, and doubt- 
ed, whether they had yet been laid down in 
the modern charts of London. For all this, 
however, I paid a heavy price in distant 
years, when the human face tyrannized over 
my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps 
in London came back and haunted my sleep, 
with the feeling of perplexities moral or 
intellectual, that brought confusion to the 
reason, or anguish and remorse to the con- 
science. 

Thus I have shown that opium does not, 
of necessity, produce inactivity or torpor ; 
but that, on the contrary, it often led me 
into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 113 

I will admit that markets and theatres are 
not the appropriate haunts of the opium- 
eater, when in the divinest state incident to 
his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become 
an oppression to him; music even, too sen- 
sual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude 
and silence, as indispensable conditions of 
those trances, or profoundest reveries, which 
are the crown and consummation of what 
opium can do for human nature. I, whose 
disease it was to meditate too much, and to 
observe too little, and who, upon my first 
entrance at college, was nearly falling into a 
deep melancholy, from brooding too much 
on the sufferings which I had witnessed in 
London, was sufficiently aware of the ten- 
dencies of my own thoughts to do all I 
could to counteract them. — I was, indeed, 
like a person who, according to the old 
legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius : 
and the remedies I sought were to force 
myself into society, and to keep my under- 
standing in continual activity upon matters 
of science. But for these remedies, I should 
certainly have become hypochondriacal^ 



114 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

melancholy. In after years, howeiver, when 
my cheerfulness was more fully re-establish- 
ed, I yielded to my natural inclination for a 
solitary life. And, at that time, I often fell 
into these reveries upon taking opium ; and 
more than once it has happened to me, on a 
summer night, when I have been at an open 
window, in a room from which I could over- 
look the sea at a mile below me, and could 

command a view of the great town of L , 

at about the same distance, that I have sat, 
from sun-set to sun-rise, motionless, and 
without wishing to move. 

I shall be charged with mysticism, Beh- 
menism, quietism, &c. but that shall not 
alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was 
one of our wisest men ; and let my readers 
see if he, in his philosophical works, be half 
as unmystical as I am. — I say, then, that it 
has often struck me that the scene itself 
was somewhat typical of what took place in 
such a reverie. The town of L repre- 
sented the earth, with its sorrows and its 
graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor 
wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 115 

but gentle agitation, and brooded over by 
a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify 
the mind and the mood which then swayed 
it. For it seemed to me as if then first 
I stood at a distance, and aloof from the 
uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, 
and the strife, were suspended ; a respite 
granted from the secret burthens of the 
heart ; a sabbath of repose ; a resting from 
human labours. Here were the hopes which 
blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with 
the peace which is in the grave ; motions 
of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, 
yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm : a tran- 
quillity that seemed no product of inertia, 
but as if resulting from mighty and equal 
antagonisms ; infinite activities, infinite 
repose. 

Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that 
to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the 
wounds that will never heal, and for " the 
pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bring- 
est an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that 
with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the 
purposes of wrath ; and to the guilty man, 
for one night givest back the hopes of his 



116 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

youth, and hands washed pure from blood ; 
and to the proud man, a brief oblivion for 

Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged ; 

that summonest to the chancery of dreams, 
for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false 
witnesses; and confoundest perjury; and 
dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous 
judges: — thou buildest upon the bosom of 
darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the 
brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of 
Phidias and Praxiteles — beyond the splen- 
dour of Babylon and Hekatompylos : and 
" from the anarchy of dreaming sleep/' cal- 
lest into sunny light the faces of long-buried 
beauties, and the blessed household counte- 
nances, cleansed from the u dishonours of 
the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to 
man ; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, 
oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! 

INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM. 

Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader 
(for all my readers must be indulgent ones, 
or else, I fear, I shall shock them too much 
to count on their courtesy), having accom- 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 117 

panied me thus far, now let me request you 
to move onwards, for about eight years; that 
is to say, from 1804 (when I have said that 
my acquaintance with opium first began) to 
1812. The years of academic life are now 
over and gone — almost forgotten ; — the 
student's cap no longer presses my temples : 
if my cap exist at all, it presses those of 
some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as 
myself, and as passionate a lover of know- 
ledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare 
to say, in the same condition with many 
thousands of excellent books in the Bod- 
leian, viz. diligently perused by certain 
studious moths and worms : or departed, 
however (which is all that I know of its 
fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, 
to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea- 
pots, tea-kettles, &c. have departed (not to 
speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, 
decanters, bed-makers, &c.) which occa- 
sional resemblances in the present genera- 
tion of tea-cups, &c. remind me of having 
once possessed, but of w r hose departure and 
final fate I, in common with most gowns- 
men of either university, could give, I sus- 



118 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

pect, but an obscure and conjectural history. 
The persecution of the chapel-bell, sound- 
ing its unwelcome summons to six o'clock 
matins, interrupts my slumbers no longer: 
the porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful 
nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in 
retaliation, so many Greek epigrams, whilst 
I was dressing, is dead, and has ceased to 
disturb any body : and I, and many others, 
who suffered much from his tintinnabulous 
propensities, have now agreed to overlook 
his errors, and have forgiven him. Even 
with the bell I am now in charity : it rings, 
I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day : and 
cruelly annoys, I doubt not, many worthy 
gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind : 
but as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its 
treacherous voice no longer (treacherous, I 
call it, for, by some refinement of malice, it 
spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it 
had been inviting one to a party) : its tones 
have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, 
let the wind sit as favourable as the malice 
of the bell itself could wish : for I am 250 
miles away from it, and buried in the depth 
of mountains. And what am 1 doing amongst 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 119 

the mountains ? Taking opium. Yes, but 
what else? Why, reader, in 1812, the year 
we are now arrived at, as well as for some 
years previous, I have been chiefly studying 
German metaphysics, in the writings of 
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how, and 
in what manner, do I live? in short, what 
class or description of men do I belong to ? 
I am at this period, viz. in 1812, living in a 
cottage; and with a single female servant 
(honi soit qui mal y pense), who, amongst 
my neighbours, passes by the name of my 
" housekeeper." And, as a scholar and a 
man of learned education, and in that sense 
a gentleman, I may presume to class myself 
as an unworthy member of that indefinite 
body called gentlemen. Partly on the ground 
I have assigned, perhaps ; partly because, 
from my having no visible calling or busi- 
ness, it is rightly judged that I must be 
living on my private fortune ; I am so 
classed by my neighbours: and, by the 
courtesy of modern England, I am usually 
addressed on letters, &c. esquire, though 
having, I fear, in the rigorous construction 
of heralds, but slender pretensions to that 



120 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

distinguished honour : yes, in popular esti- 
mation, I am X. Y. Z., esquire, but not 
Justice of the Peace, nor Custos Rotulorum. 
Am I married ? Not yet. And I still take 
opium ? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, 
have taken it unblushingly ever since " the 
rainy Sunday/' and " the stately Pantheon," 
and " the beatific druggist" of 1 804 ? — Even 
so. And how do I find my health after all 
this opium-eating? in short, how do I do? 
Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader : in 
the phrase of ladies in the straw, " as well 
as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to 
say the eal and simple truth, though, to 
satisfy the theories of medical men, I ought - 
to be ill, I never was better in my life than 
in the spring of 1812 ; and I hope sincerely, 
that the quantity of claret, port, or " par- 
ticular Madeira," which, in all probability, 
you, good reader, have taken, and design to 
take, for every term of eight years, during 
your natural life, may as little disorder your 
health as mine was disordered by the opium 
I had taken for the eight years, between 
1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again 
the danger of taking any medical advice 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 121 

from Anastasius; in divinity, for aught I 
know, or law, he may be a safe counsellor ; 
but not in medicine. No : it is far better to 
consult Dr. Buchan ; as I did : for 1 never 
forgot that worthy man's excellent sugges- 
tion : and I was " particularly careful not to 
take above five-and-twenty ounces of lauda- 
num." To this moderation and temperate 
use of the article, I may ascribe it, I suppose, 
that as yet, at least, (i. e. in 1812,) I am 
ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging 
terrors which opium has in store for those 
who abuse its lenity. At the same time, it 
must not be forgotten, that hitherto I have 
been only a dilletante eater of opium : eight 
years' practice even, with the single pre- 
caution of allowing sufficient intervals 
between every indulgence, has not been 
sufficient to make opium necessary to me 
as an article of daily diet. But now comes 
a different era. Move on, if you please, 
reader, to 1813. In the summer of the 
year we have just quitted, I had suffered 
much in bodily health from distress of mind 
connected with a very melancholy event. 



122 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

This event, being no ways related to the 
subject now before me, further than through 
the bodily illness which it produced, I need 
not more particularly notice. Whether this 
illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, 
I know not: but so it was, that in the latter 
year I was attacked by a most appalling 
irritation of the stomach, in all respects the 
same as that which had caused me so much 
suffering in youth, and accompanied by a 
revival of all the old dreams. This is the 
point of my narrative on which, as respects 
my own self-justification, the whole of w T hat 
follows may be said to hinge. And here I 
find myself in a perplexing dilemma : — 
Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the 
reader's patience, by such a detail of my 
malady, and of my struggles with it, as 
might suffice to establish the fact of my 
inability to wrestle any longer with irritation 
and constant suffering : or, on the other 
hand, by passing lightly over this critical 
part of my story, I must forego the benefit 
of a stronger impression left on the mind of 
the reader, and must lay myself open to the 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 123 

misconstruction of having slipped by the 
easy and gradual steps of self-indulging 
persons, from the first to the final stage of 
opium-eating (a misconstruction to which 
there will be a lurking predisposition in 
most readers, from my previous acknowledg- 
ments.) This is the dilemma : the first horn 
of which would be sufficient to toss and gore 
any column of patient readers, though drawn 
up sixteen deep and constantly relieved by 
fresh men : consequently that is not to be 
thought of. It remains then, that I postulate 
so much as is necessary for my purpose. 
And let me take as full credit for what I 
postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good 
reader, at the expense of your patience and 
my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me 
suffer in your good opinion through my own 
forbearance and regard for your comfort. 
No : believe all that I ask of you, viz. that 
I could resist no longer; believe it liberally, 
and as an act of grace : or else in mere 
prudence : for, if not, then in the next edi- 
tion of my Opium Confessions revised and 
enlarged, I will make you believe and trem- 
ble : and a force d f ennui/e?\ by mere dint of 
g2 



1.24 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

pandiculation I will terrify all readers of 
mine from ever again questioning any pos- 
tulate that I shall think fit to make. 

This then, let me repeat, I postulate — 

that, at the time I began to take opium 

daily, I could not have done otherwise. 

Whether, indeed, afterwards I might not 

have succeeded in breaking off the habit, 

even when it seemed to me that all efforts 

would be unavailing, and whether many of 

the innumerable efforts which I did make 

might not have been carried much further, 

and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost 

might not have been followed up much 

more energetically — these are questions 

which I must decline. Perhaps I might 

make out a case of palliation; but, shall 

I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a 

besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too 

much of an Eudasmonist: I hanker too 

much after a state of happiness, both for 

myself and others : I cannot face misery, 

whether my own or not, with an eye of 

sufficient firmness : and am little capable 

of encountering present pain for the sake 

of any reversionary benefit. On some other 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 125 

matters, I can agree with the gentlemen in 
the cotton-trade # at Manchester in affecting 
the Stoic philosophy : but not in this. Here 
I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, 
and I look out for some courteous and con- 
siderate sect that will condescend more to 
the infirm condition of an opium-eater; 
that are ' sweet men/ as Chaucer says, e to 
give absolution/ and will show some con- 
science in the penances they inflict, and 
the efforts of abstinence they exact, from 
poor sinners like myself. An inhuman 
moralist I can no more endure in my ner- 
vous state than opium that has not been 
boiled. At any rate, he, who summons me 
to send out a large freight of self-denial 
and mortification upon any cruising voyage 
of moral improvement, must make it clear 
to my understanding that the concern is a 

* A handsome news-room, of which I was very 
politely made free in passing through Manchester by 
several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, The 
Porch : whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, 
inferred that the subscribers meant to profess them- 
selves followers of Zeno. But I have been since 
assured that this is a mistake. 



126 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

hopeful one. At my time of life (six and 
thirty years of age) it cannot be supposed 
that I have much energy to spare : in fact, 
I find it all little enough for the intellectual 
labours I have on my hands : and, there- 
fore, let no man expect to frighten me by a 
few hard words into embarking any part of 
it upon desperate adventures of morality. 

Whether desperate or not, however, the 
issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I 
have mentioned ; and from this date, the 
reader is to consider me as a regular and 
confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask 
whether on any particular day he had or 
had not taken opium, would be to ask whe- 
ther his lungs had performed respiration, or 
the heart fulfilled its functions. — You un- 
derstand now, reader, what I am : and you 
are by this time aware, that no old gentle- 
man, u with a snow-white beard/' will have 
any chance of persuading me to surrender 
" the little golden receptacle of the perni- 
cious drug." No : I give notice to all, 
whether moralists or surgeons, that, what- 
ever be their pretensions and skill in their 
respective lines of practice, they must not 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 127 

hope for any countenance from me, if they 
think to begin by any savage proposition 
for a Lent or Ramadan of abstinence from 
opium. This then being all fully understood 
between us, we shall in future sail before the 
wind. Now then, reader, from 1813, where 
all this time we have been sitting down and 
loitering — rise up, if you please, and walk 
forward about three years more. Now draw 
up the curtain, and you shall see me in a 
new character. 

If any man, poor or rich, were to say 
that he would tell us what had been the 
happiest day in his life, and the why, and 
the wherefore, 1 suppose that we should all 
cry out — Hear him! Hear him! — As to the 
happiest day, that must be very difficult for 
any wise man to name : because any event, 
that could occupy so distinguished a place 
in a man's retrospect of his life, or be enti- 
tled to have shed a special felicity on any 
one day, ought to be of such an enduring 
character, as that (accidents apart) it should 
have continued to shed the same felicity, or 
one not distinguishably less, on many years 
together. To the happiest lustrum, how- 



128 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

ever, or even to the happiest year, it may 
be allowed to any man to point without 
discountenance from w T isdom. This year, 
in my case, reader, was the one which we 
have now reached ; though it stood, I 
confess, as a parenthesis between years of 
a gloomier character. It was a year of 
brilliant water (to speak after the manner 
of jewellers), set as it were, and insulated, in 
the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. 
Strange as it may sound, I had a little 
before this time descended suddenly, and 
without any considerable effort, from 320 
grains of opium (i.e. eight^ thousand drops 
of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or 



* I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as 
equivalent to one grain of opium, which, I believe, is 
the common estimate. However, as both may be 
considered variable quantities (the crude opium vary- 
ing much in strength, and the tincture still more), I 
suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in 
such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size 
as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 
drops: so that 8000 drops are about eighty times a 
tea-spoonful. The reader sees how much I kept 
within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 129 

one eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if 
by magic, the cloud of profoundest melan- 
choly which rested upon my brain, like 
some black vapours that I have seen roll 
away from the summits of mountains, drew 
off in one day (vyx$W £ ?w) 5 passed off with 
its murky banners as simultaneously as a 
ship that has been stranded, and is floated 
off by a spring tide — 

That moveth altogether, if it move at all. 

Now, then, I was again happy : I now 
took only 1000 drops of laudanum per day : 
and what was that ? A latter spring had 
come to close up the season of youth : my 
brain performed its functions as healthily as 
ever before : I read Kant again ; and again 
I understood him, or fancied that I did. 
Again my feelings of pleasure expanded 
themselves to all around me : and if any 
man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from 
neither, had been announced to me in my 
unpretending cottage, I should have wel- 
comed him with as sumptuous a reception 
as so poor a man could offer. Whatever 
else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, 
g5 



130 CONFESSIONS 0£ AN 

• — of laudanum I would have given hini as 
much as he wished, and in a golden cup. 
And, by the way, now that I speak of giving 
laudanum away, I remember, about this 
time, a little incident, which I mention, 
because,, trifling as it was, the reader will 
soon meet it again in my dreams, which it 
influenced more fearfully than could be 
imagined. One day a Malay knocked at 
my door. What business a Malay could 
have to transact amongst English moun- 
tains, I cannot conjecture : but possibly he 
was on his road to a sea-port about forty 
miles distant. 

The servant who opened the door to him 
was a young girl born and bred amongst 
the mountains, who had never seen an 
Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban, there- 
fore, confounded her not a little : and, as it 
turned out, that his attainments in English 
were exactly of the same extent as hers in 
the Malay, there seemed to be an impas- 
sable gulf fixed between all communication 
of ideas, if either party had happened to 
possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, 
recollecting the reputed learning of her 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 131 

master (and, doubtless, giving me credit 
for a knowledge of all the languages of the 
earth, besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar 
ones), came and gave me to understand that 
there was a sort of demon below, whom she 
clearly imagined that my art could exorcise 
from the house. I did not immediately go 
down : but, when I did, the group which 
presented itself, arranged as it was by acci- 
dent, though not very elaborate, took hold 
of my fancy and my eye in a way that none 
of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the 
ballets at the Opera House, though so os- 
tentatiously complex, had ever done. In a 
cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall 
with dark wood that from age and rubbing- 
resembled oak, and looking more like a 
rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood 
the Malay — his turban and loose trowsers 
of dingy white relieved upon the dark pa- 
nelling ; he had placed himself nearer to the 
girl than she seemed to relish ; though her 
native spirit of mountain intrepidity con- 
tended with the feeling of simple awe which 
her countenance expressed as she gazed 
upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more 



132 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

striking picture there could not be ima- 
gined, than the beautiful English face of 
the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together 
with her erect and independent attitude, 
contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin 
of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with 
mahogany, by marine air, his small, fierce, 
restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and 
adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious 
looking Malay, was a little child from a 
neighbouring cottage who had crept in 
after him, and was now in the act of revert- 
ing its head, and gazing upwards at the 
turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst 
with one hand he caught at the dress of the 
young woman for protection. My know- 
ledge of the Oriental tongues is not remark- 
ably extensive, being indeed confined to 
two words — the Arabic word for barley, 
and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), 
which I have learnt from Anastasius. And, 
as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor 
even Adelung's Mithridates, which might 
have helped me to a few words, I addressed 
him in some lines from the Iliad ; consider- 
ing that, of such languages as I possessed, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 133 

Greek, in point of longitude, came geo- 
graphically nearest to an Oriental one. He 
worshipped me in a most devout manner, 
and replied in what I suppose was Malay. 
In this way I saved my reputation with my 
neighbours : for the Malay had no means 
of betraying the secret. He lay down upon 
the floor for about an hour, and then pur- 
sued his journey. On his departure, I pre- 
sented him with a piece of opium. To him, 
as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium 
must be familiar : and the expression of his 
face convinced me that it. was. Neverthe- 
less, I was struck with some little conster- 
nation when I saw him suddenly raise his 
hand to his mouth, and (in the school-boy 
phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three 
pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was 
enough to kill three dragoons and their 
horses : and I felt some alarm for the poor 
creature : but what could be done ? I had 
given him the opium in compassion for his 
solitary life, on recollecting that if he had 
travelled on foot from London, it must be 
nearly three weeks since he could have 
exchanged a thought with any human being. 



134 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

I could not think of violating the laws of 
hospitality, by having him seized and 
drenched with an emetic, and thus frighten- 
ing him into a notion that we were going to 
sacrifice him to some English idol. No : 
there was clearly no help for it : — he took 
his leave : and for some days I felt anxious : 
but as I never heard of any Malay being 
found dead, I became convinced that he 
was used # to opium : and that I must have 
done him the service I designed, by giving 



* This, however, is not a necessary conclusion: the 
varieties of effect produced by opium on different con- 
stitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Har- 
riott's Struggles through Life, vol. iii. p. 391, third 
edition,) has recorded that, on the first occasion of 
his trying laudanum for the gout, he took forty drops, 
the next night sixty, and on the fifth night eighty, 
without any effect whatever: and this at an advanced 
age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, 
however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle ; 
and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which 
I will publish, provided the College of Surgeons will 
pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings 
upon this subject, I will relate it : but it is far too 
good a story to be published gratis. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 135 

him one night of respite from the pains of 
wandering. 

This incident I have digressed to mention, 
because this Malay (partly from the pic- 
turesque exhibition he assisted to frame, 
partly from the anxiety I connected with 
his image for some days) fastened after- 
wards upon my dreams, and brought other 
Malays with him worse than himself, that 
ran " a-muck " # at me, and led me into a 
world of troubles. — But to quit this epi- 
sode, and to return to my intercalary year 
of happiness. I have said already, that on 
a subject so important to us all as happiness, 
we should listen with pleasure to any man's 
experience or experiments, even though he 
were but a plough-boy, who cannot be sup- 
posed to have ploughed very deep into such 
an intractable soil as that of human pains 
and pleasures, or to have conducted his 
researches upon any very enlightened prin- 
ciples. But I, who have taken happiness, 

* See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller 
or voyager of the frantic excesses committed hy Malays 
who have taken opium, or are reduced to desperation 
by ill luck at gambling. 



136 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

both in a solid and a liquid shape, both 
boiled and unboiled, both East India and 
Turkey — who have conducted my experi- 
ments upon this interesting subject with a 
sort of galvanic battery — and have, for the 
general benefit of the world, inoculated 
myself, as it were, with the poison of 8000 
drops of laudanum per day (just, for the 
same reason, as a French surgeon inocu- 
lated himself lately with cancer — an Eng- 
lish one, twenty years ago, with plague — 
and a third, I know not of what nation, 
with hydrophobia), — / (it will be admitted) 
must surely know what happiness is, if any 
body does. And, therefore, I will here lay 
down an analysis of happiness ; and as the 
most interesting mode of communicating it, 
I will give it, not didactically, but wrapt up 
and involved in a picture of one evening, as 
I spent every evening during the intercalary 
year when laudanum, though taken daily, 
was to me no more than the elixir of plea- 
sure. This done, I shall quit the subject of 
happiness altogether, and pass to a very 
different one — the pains of opium. 

Let there be a cottage, standing in a 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 137 

valley, 18 miles from any town — no spa- 
cious valley, but about two miles long, by 
three quarters of a mile in average width ; 
the benefit of which provision is, that all 
the families resident within its circuit will 
compose, as it were, one larger household 
personally familiar to your eye, and more or 
less interesting to your affections. Let the 
mountains be real mountains, between 3 
and 4000 feet high; and the cottage, a real 
cottage ; not (as a witty author has it) " a 
cottage with a double coach-house :" let it 
be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual 
scene), a white cottage, embowered with 
flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a 
succession of flowers upon the walls, and 
clustering: round the windows through all 
the months of spring, summer, and autumn 
— beginning, in fact, with May roses, and 
ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not 
be spring, nor summer, nor autumn- — but 
winter, in his sternest shape. This is a 
most important point in the science of hap- 
piness. And I am surprised to see people 
overlook it, and think it matter of congra- 
tulation that winter is going ; or, if coming, 



138 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

is not likely to be a severe one. On the 
contrary, I put up a petition annually, for 
as much snow, hail, frost, or storm, of one 
kind or other, as the skies can possibly 
afford us. Surely every body is aware of 
the divine pleasures which attend a winter 
fire-side : candles at four o'clock, warm 
hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters 
closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies 
on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are 
raging audibly without, 

And at the doors and windows seem to call, 
As heav'n and earth they would together mell ; 
Yet the least entrance find they none at all ; 
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. 

Castle of Indolence, 

All these are items in the description of 
a winter evening, which must surely be 
familiar to every body born in a high lati- 
tude. And it is evident, that most of these 
delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very 
low temperature of the atmosphere to pro- 
duce them : they are fruits which cannot 
be ripened without weather stormy or incle- 
ment, in some way or other. I am not 
"particular" as people say, whether it be 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 139 

snow, or black frost, or wind so strong, 

that (as Mr. says) # you may lean 

your back against it like a post." I can 
put up even with rain, provided it rains cats 
and dogs: but something of the sort I must 
have : and, if I have it not, I think myself 
in a manner ill-used : for why am I called 
on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals, 
and candles, and various privations that 
will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to 
have the article good of its kind ? No : a 
Canadian winter for my money : or a Rus-r 
sian one, where every man is but a co- 
proprietor with the north wind in the fee- 
simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great 
an epicure am I in this matter, that I cannot 
relish a winter night fully if it be much 
past St. Thomas's day, and have degene- 
rated into disgusting tendencies to vernal 
appearances : no : it must be divided by a 
thick wall of dark nights from all return of 
light and sunshine. — From the latter weeks 
of October to Christmas-eve, therefore, is 
the period during which happiness is in 
season, which, in my judgment, enters the 
room with the tea-tray : for tea, though 



140 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

ridiculed by those who are naturally of 
coarse nerves, or are become so from wine- 
drinking, and are not susceptible of influ- 
ence from so refined a stimulant, will always 
be the favourite beverage of the intellectual : 
and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. 
Johnson in a bellum internecinum against 
Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, 
who should presume to disparage it. — But 
here, to save myself the trouble of too 
much verbal description, I will introduce 
a painter; and give him directions for the 
rest of the picture. Painters do not like 
white cottages, unless a good deal weather- 
stained : but as the reader now understands 
that it is a winter night, his services will 
not be required, except for the inside of the 
house. 

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by 
twelve, and not more than seven and a half 
feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambi- 
tiously styled, in my family, the drawing- 
room : but, being contrived " a double debt 
to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed 
the library; for it happens that books are 
the only article of property in which I am 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 141 

richer than my neighbours. Of these, I 
have about five thousand, collected gradu- 
ally since my eighteenth year. Therefore, 
painter, put as many as you can into this 
room. Make it populous with books : and, 
furthermore, paint me a good fire; and fur- 
niture, plain and modest, befitting the un- 
pretending cottage of a scholar. And, near 
the fire, paint me a tea-table; and (as it is 
clear that no creature can come to see one 
such a stormy night,) place only two cups 
and saucers on the tea-tray : and, if you 
know how to paint such a thing symboli- 
cally, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea- 
pot — eternal a parte ante, and a parte post ; 
for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at 
night to four o'clock in the morning. And, 
as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to 
pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely 
young woman, sitting at the table. Paint 
her arms like Aurora's, and her smiles like 
Hebe's : — Eut no, dear M., not even in jest 
let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate 
my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable 
as mere personal beauty; or that the witch- 
craft of angelic smiles lies within the empire 



142 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

of any earthly pencil. Pass, then, ray good 
painter, to something more within its power : 
and the next article brought forward should 
naturally be myself — a picture of the Opium- 
eater, with his " little golden receptacle of 
the pernicious drug/' lying beside him on 
the table. As to the opium, I have no objec- 
tion to see a picture of (hat, though I would 
rather see the original : you may paint it, if 
you choose; but I apprize you, that no 
"little" receptacle would, even in 1816, 
answer my purpose, who was at a distance 
from the u stately Pantheon," and all drug- 
gists (mortal or otherwise). No : you may 
as well paint the real receptacle, which was 
not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a 
wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may 
put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum : that, 
and a book of German metaphysics placed 
by its side, will sufficiently attest my being 
in the neighbourhood ; but, as to myself, — 
there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I 
ought to occupy the foreground of the pic- 
ture ; that being the hero of the piece, or (if 
you choose) the criminal at the bar, my 
body should be had into court. This seems 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 143 

reasonable : but why should I confess, on 
this point, to a painter? or why confess at 
all ? If the public (into whose private ear I 
am confidentially whispering my confessions, 
and not into any painter's) should chance 
to have framed some agreeable picture for 
itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, — should 
have ascribed to him, romantically, an ele- 
gant person, or a handsome face, why should 
I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a 
delusion — pleasing both to the public and 
to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according 
to your own fancy : and, as a painter's fancy 
should teem with beautiful creations, I can- 
not fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And 
now, reader, we have run through all the 
ten categories of my condition, as it stood 
about 1816-17 : up to the middle of which 
latter year I judge myself to have been a 
happy man : and the elements of that happi- 
ness I have endeavoured to place before 
you, in the above sketch of the interior of a 
scholar's library, in a cottage among the 
mountains, on a stormy winter evening. 
But now farewell — a long farewell to 



144 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

happiness — winter or summer! farewell to 
smiles and laughter ! farewell to peace of 
mind ! farewell to hope and to tranquil 
dreams, and to the blessed consolations of 
sleep ! for more than three years and a half 
I am summoned away from these : I am now 
arrived at an Iliad of woes : for I have now 
to record 

THE PAINS OF OPIUM. 

» as when some great painter dips 



His pencil-in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. 

Shelley's Revolt of Islam, 

Reader, who have thus far accompanied 
me, I must request your attention to a brief 
explanatory note on three points : 

1. For several reasons, I have not been 
able to compose the notes for this part of 
my narrative into any regular and connected 
shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find 
them, or have now drawn them up from 
memory. Some of them point to their own 
date ; some I have dated ; and some are 
undated. Whenever it could answer my 
purpose to transplant them from the natural 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 145 

or chronological order, I have not scrupled 
to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, 
sometimes in the past tense. Few of the 
notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the 
period of time to which they relate ; but this 
can little affect their accuracy; as the im- 
pressions were such that they can never fade 
from my mind. Much has been omitted. I 
could not, without effort, constrain myself to 
the task of either recalling, or constructing 
into a regular narrative, the whole burthen 
of horrors which lies upon my brain. This 
feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly 
that I am now in London, and am a helpless 
sort of person, who cannot even arrange his 
own papers without assistance; and I am 
separated from the hands which are wont to 
perform for me the offices of an amanuensis. 
2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too 
confidential and communicative of my own 
private history. It may be so. But my 
way of writing is rather to think aloud, and 
follow my own humours, than much to con- 
sider who is listening to me ; and, if I stop 
to consider what is proper to be said to this 

H 



146 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

or that person, I shall soon come to doubt 
whether any part at all is proper. The fact 
is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or 
twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose 
myself writing to those who will be interested 
about me hereafter ; and wishing to have some 
record of a time, the entire history of which 
no one can know but myself, I do it as fully 
as I am able with the efforts I am now 
capable of making, because I know not 
whether I can ever find time to do it 
again. 

3. It will occur to you often to ask, why 
did I not release myself from the horrors of 
opium, by leaving it off, or diminishing it ? 
To this I must answer briefly : it might be 
supposed that I yielded to the fascinations 
of opium too easily ; it cannot be supposed 
that any man can be charmed by its terrors. 
The reader may be sure, therefore, that I 
made attempts innumerable to reduce the 
quantity. I add, that those who witnei ed 
the agonies of those attempts, and not 
myself, were the first to beg me to desist. 
But could not I have reduced it a drop a 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 147 

day, or by adding water, have bisected or 
trisected a drop ? A thousand drops bisected 
would thus have taken nearly six years to 
reduce; and that way would certainly not 
have answered. But this is a common mis- 
take of those who know nothing of opium 
experimentally ; I appeal to those who do, 
whether it is not always found that down to 
a certain point it can be reduced with ease 
and even pleasure, but that, after that point, 
further reduction causes intense suffering. 
Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who 
know not what they are talking of, you will 
suffer a little low spirits and dejection for 
a few days. I answer, no ; there is nothing 
like low spirits ; on the contrary, the mere 
animal spirits are uncommonly raised : the 
pulse is improved : the health is better. It 
is not there that the suffering lies. It has 
no resemblance to the sufferings caused by 
renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable 
irritation of stomach (which surely is not 
much like dejection), accompanied by in- 
tense perspirations, and feelings such as I 
ghall not attempt to describe without more 
space at my command. 
H2 



148 CONFESSIONS OP AN 

I shall now enter " in medias res" and 
shall anticipate, from a time when my opium 
pains might be said to be at their acme, an 
account of their palsying effects on the 
intellectual faculties. 



My studies have now been long inter- 
rupted. I cannot read to myself with any 
pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. 
Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure 
of others ; because, reading is an accom- 
plishment of mine ; and, in the slang use of 
the word accomplishment as a superficial and 
ornamental attainment, almost the only one 
I possess : and formerly, if I had any vanity 
at all connected with any endowment or 
attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I 
had observed that no accomplishment was 
so rare. Players are the worst readers of 

all : reads vilely : and Mrs. , who 

is so celebrated, can read nothing well but 
dramatic compositions : Milton she cannot 
read sufferably. People in general either 
read poetry without any passion at all, or 
else overstep the modesty of nature, and 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 149 

read not like scholars. Of late, if I have 
felt moved by any thing in books, it has 
been by the grand lamentations of Samson 
Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the 
Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, 
when read aloud by myself, A young lady 
sometimes comes and drinks tea with us : at 
her request and M/s I now and then read 

W 's poems to them, (W., by the by, is 

the only poet I ever met who could read 
his own verses: often indeed he reads 
admirably.) 

For nearly two years I believe that I read 
no book but one : and I owe it to the author, 
in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to 
-mention what that was. The sublimer and 
more passionate poets I still read, as I have 
said, by snatches, and occasionally. But 
my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the 
exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, 
for the most part, analytic studies are con- 
tinuous, and not to be pursued by fits and 
starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, 
for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c. 
were all become insupportable to me; I 
shrunk from them with a sense of powerless 



150 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and infantine feebleness that gave me an 
anguish the greater from remembering the 
time when I grappled with them to my own 
hourly delight ; and for this further reason, 
because I had devoted the labour of my 
whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, 
blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elabo- 
rate toil of constructing one single work, to 
which I had presumed to give the title of 
an unfinished work of Spinosa's; viz. De 
emendatione humani intellectus. This was 
now lying locked up, as by frost, like any 
Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon 
too great a scale for the resources of the 
architect ; and, instead of surviving me as a 
monument of wishes at least, and aspira- 
tions, and a life of labour dedicated to the 
exaltation of human nature in that way in 
which God had best fitted me to promote so 
great an object, it was likely to stand a 
memorial to my children of hopes defeated, 
of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accu- 
mulated, of foundations laid that were never 
to support a superstructure, — of the grief 
and the ruin of the architect. In this state 
of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 151 

my attention to political economy; my 
understanding, which formerly had been as 
active and restless as a hyena, could not, I 
suppose (so long as I lived at all) sink into 
utter lethargy ; and political economy offers 
this advantage to a person in my state, that 
though it is eminently an organic science 
(no part, that is to say, but what acts on the 
whole, as the whole again reacts on each 
part), yet the several parts may be detached 
and contemplated singly. Great as was the 
prostration of my powers at this time, yet 
I could not forget my knowledge; and my 
understanding had been for too many years 
intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and 
the great masters of knowledge, not to be 
aware of the utter feebleness of the main 
herd of modern economists. I had been 
led in 1811 to look into loads of books and 
pamphlets on many branches of economy ; 
and, at my desire, M, sometimes read to me 
chapters from more recent works, or parts 
of parliamentary debates. I saw that these 
were generally the very dregs and rinsings 
of the human intellect ; and that any man of 
sound head, and practised in wielding logic 



152 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

with a scholastic adroitness, might take up 
the whole academy of modern economists, 
and throttle them between heaven and earth 
with his finger and thumb, or bray their 
fungus heads to powder with a lady's fan. 
At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh 
sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book : and re- 
curring to my own prophetic anticipation 
of the advent of some legislator for this 
science, I said, before I had finished the first 
chapter, " Thou art the man ! " Wonder and 
curiosity were emotions that had long been 
dead in me. Yet I wondered once more : I 
wondered at myself that I could once again 
be stimulated to the effort of reading : and 
much more I wondered at the book. Had 
this profound work been really written in 
England during the nineteenth century? 
Was it possible ? I supposed thinking # had 

* The reader must remember what I here mean by 
thinking : because, else this would be a very presump- 
tuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to 
excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative 
and combining thought: but there is a sad dearth of 
masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman 
of eminent name has lately told us, that he is obliged to 
quit even mathematics, for want of encouragement. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 153 

been extinct in England. Could it be that 
an Englishman, and he not in academic 
bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and 
senatorial cares, had accomplished what all 
the universities of Europe, and a century of 
thought, had failed even to advance by one 
hair's breadth? All other writers had been 
crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight 
of facts and documents ; Mr. Ricardo had 
deduced, a priori, from the understanding 
itself, laws which first gave a ray of light 
into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and 
had constructed what had been but a collec- 
tion of tentative discussions into a science 
of regular proportions, now first standing on 
an eternal basis. 

Thus did one single work of a profound 
understanding avail to give me a pleasure 
and an activity which I had not known for 
years: — it roused me even to write, or, at 
least, to dictate, what M. wrote for me. It 
seemed to me, that some important truths 
had escaped even " the inevitable eye" of 
Mr. Ricardo : and, as these were, for the 
most part, of such a nature that I could 
express or illustrate them more briefly and 
h5 



154 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the 
usual clumsy and loitering diction of econo- 
mists, the whole would not have filled a 
pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. 
for my amanuensis, even at this time, inca- 
pable as I was of all general exertion, I drew 
up my Prolegomena to all future Systems of 
Political Economy. I hope it will not be 
found redolent of opium ; though, indeed, to 
most people, the subject itself is a sufficient 
opiate. 

This exertion, however, was but a tem- 
porary flash; as the sequel showed — for I 
designed to publish my work : arrangements 
were made at a provincial press, about 
eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An 
additional compositor was retained, for some 
days, on this account. The work was even 
twice advertised : and I was, in a manner, 
pledged to the fulfilment of my intention. 
But I had a preface to write ; and a dedica- 
tion, which I wished to make a splendid one, 
to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite 
unable to accomplish all this. The arrange- 
ments were countermanded : the compositor 
dismissed : and my " Prolegomena" rested 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 155 

peacefully by the side of its elder and more 
dignified brother. 

I have thus described and illustrated my 
intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, 
more or less, to every part of the four years 
during which I was under the Circean spells 
of opium. But for misery and suffering, 
I might, indeed, be said to have existed in 
a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on 
myself to write a letter; an answer of a few 
words, to any that I received, was the utmost 
that I could accomplish ; and often that not 
until the letter had lain weeks, or even 
months, on my writing table. Without the 
aid of M. all records of bills paid, or to be 
paid, must have perished : and my whole 
domestic economy, whatever became of 
Political Economy, must have gone into 
irretrievable confusion. — I shall not after- 
wards allude to this part of the case : it is 
one, however, which the opium-eater will 
find, in the end, as oppressive and torment- 
ing as any other, from the sense of inca- 
pacity and feebleness, from the direct 
embarrassments incident to the neglect or 



\ 



156 CONFESSIONS Of AN 

procrastination of each day's appropriate 
duties, and from the remorse which must 
often exasperate the stings of these evils to 
a reflective and conscientious mind. The 
opium-eater loses none of his moral sensi- 
bilities, or aspirations : he wishes and longs, 
as earnestly as ever, to realize what he 
believes possible, and feels to be exacted by 
duty ; but his intellectual apprehension of 
what is possible infinitely outruns his power, 
not of execution only, but even of power to 
attempt. He lies under the weight of incu* 
bus and night-mare : he lies in sight of all 
that he would fain perform, just as a man 
forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal 
languor of a relaxing disease, who is com- 
pelled to witness injury or outrage offered 
to some object of his tenderest love : — he 
curses the spells which chain him down 
'from motion : — he would lay down his life 
if he might but get up and walk ; but he 
is powerless as an infant, and cannot even 
attempt to rise. 

I now pass to what is the main subject of 
these latter confessions, to the history and 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 157 

journal of what took place in my dreams; 
for these were the immediate and proximate 
cause of my acutest suffering. 

The first notice I had of any important 
change going on in this part of my physical 
economy, was from the re-awakening of a 
state of eye generally incident to childhood, 
or exalted states of irritability. I know 
not whether my reader is aware that many 
children, perhaps most, have a power of 
painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all 
sorts of phantoms : in some, that power is 
simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; 
others have a voluntary, or a semi-volun- 
tary power to dismiss or to summon them ; 
or, as a child once said to me when I ques- 
tioned him on this matter, " I can tell them 
to go, and they go ; but sometimes they 
come, when I don't tell them to come/' 
Whereupon I told him that he had almost 
as unlimited a command over apparitions, as 
a Roman centurion over his soldiers. — In 
the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this 
faculty became positively distressing to me : 
at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast pro- 
cessions passed along in mournful pomp ; 



158 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

friezes of never-ending stories, that to my 
feelings were as sad and solemn as if they 
were stories drawn from times before (Edi- 
pus or Priam — before Tyre — before Mem- 
phis. And, at the same time, a corre- 
sponding change took place in my dreams ; 
a theatre seemed suddenly opened and 
lighted up within my brain, which presented 
nightly spectacles of more than earthly 
splendour. And the four following facts 
may be mentioned, as noticeable at this 
time : 

1 . That, as the creative state of the eye 
increased, a sympathy seemed to arise be- 
tween the waking and the dreaming states 
of the brain in one point — that whatsoever 
I happened to call up and to trace by a 
voluntary act upon the darkness was very 
apt to transfer itself to my dreams ; so that 
I feared to exercise this faculty ; for, as 
Midas turned all things to gold, that yet 
baffled his hopes and defrauded his human 
desires, so whatsoever things capable of 
being visually represented I did but think 
of in the darkness, immediately shaped 
themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and, 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 159 

by a process apparently no less inevitable, 
when thus once traced in faint and visionary 
colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, 
they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry 
of my dreams, into insufferable splendour 
that fretted my heart. 

2. For this, and all other changes in my 
dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated 
anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are 
wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed 
every night to descend, not metaphorically, 
but literally to descend, into chasms and sun- 
less abysses, depths below depths, from which 
it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. 
Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reas- 
cended. This I do not dwell upon ; because 
the state of gloom which attended these 
gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to 
utter darkness, as of some suicidal despon- 
dency, cannot be approached by words. 

3. The sense of space, and in the end, the 
sense of time, were both powerfully affected. 
Buildings, landscapes, &c. were exhibited in 
proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not 
fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was 
amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. 



160 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

This, however, did not disturb me so much 
as the vast expansion of time ; I sometimes 
seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in 
one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings 
representative of a millennium passed in that 
time, or, however, of a duration far beyond 
the limits of any human experience. 

4. The minutest incidents of childhood, 
or forgotten scenes of later years, were often 
revived : I could not be said to recollect 
them ; for if I had been told of them when 
waking, I should not have been able to 
acknowledge them as parts of my past expe- 
rience. But placed as they were before me, 
in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all 
their evanescent circumstances and accom- 
panying feelings, I recognised them instan- 
taneously. I was once told by a near rela- 
tive of mine, that having in her childhood 
fallen into a river, and being on the very 
verge of death but for the critical assistance 
which reached her, she saw in a moment her 
whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed 
before her simultaneously as in a mirror; 
and she had a faculty developed as suddenly 
for comprehending the whole and every part. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 161 

This, from some opium experiences of mine, 
I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same 
thing asserted twice in modern books, and 
accompanied by a remark which I am con- 
vinced is true ; viz. that the dread book of 
account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, 
in fact, the mind itself of each individual. 
Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is 
no such thing as forgetting possible to the 
mind ; a thousand accidents may, and will 
interpose a veil between our present con- 
sciousness and the secret inscriptions on the 
mind; accidents of the same sort will also 
rend away this veil ; but alike, whether 
veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains 
for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw 
before the common light of day, whereas, in 
fact, we all know that it is the light which 
is drawn over them as a veil — and that they 
are waiting to be revealed, when the obscur- 
ing daylight shall have withdrawn. 

Having noticed these four facts as memo- 
rably distinguishing my dreams from those 
of health, I shall now T cite a case illustrative 
of the first fact ; and shall then cite any 
others that I remember, either in their chro- 



162 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

nological order, or any other that may give 
them more effect as pictures to the reader. 
, I had been in youth, and even since, for 
occasional amusement, a great reader of 
Livy, whom, I confess, that I prefer, both 
for style and matter, to any other of the 
Roman historians ; and I had often felt as 
most solemn and appalling sounds, and 
most emphatically representative of the ma- 
jesty of the Roman people, the two words 
so often occurring in Livy — Consul Roma- 
nics; especially when the consul is intro- 
duced in his military character. I mean to 
say, that the words king — sultan — regent, 
&c. or any other titles of those who embody 
in their own persons the collective majesty 
of a great people> had less power over my 
reverential feelings. I had also, though 
no great reader of history, made myself 
minutely and critically familiar with one 
period of English history, viz. the period 
of the Parliamentary War, having been 
attracted by the moral grandeur of some 
who figured in that day, and by the many 
interesting: memoirs w r hich survived those 
anquiet times. Both these parts of my 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 163 

lighter reading, having furnished me often 
with matter of reflection, now furnished me 
with matter for my dreams. Often I used 
to see, after painting upon the blank dark- 
ness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a 
crowd of ladies; and perhaps a festival, and 
dances. And I heard it said, or I said to 
myself, " These are English ladies from the 
unhappy times of Charles I. These are the 
wives and the daughters of those who met 
in peace, and sat at the same tables, and 
were allied by marriage or by blood; and 
yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, 
never smiled upon each other again, nor 
met but in the field of battle ; and at Mars- 
ton Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut 
asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, 
and washed away in blood the memory of 
ancient friendship." — The ladies danced, 
and looked as lovely as the court of George 
IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that 
they had been in the grave for nearly two 
centuries. — This pageant would suddenly 
dissolve : and, at a clapping of hands, would 
be heard the heart-quaking sound of Consul 
Romanus : and immediately came " sweeping 



164 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or 
Marius, girt round by a company of centu- 
rions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a 
spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the 
Roman legions. 

Many years ago, when I was looking over 
Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Cole- 
ridge, who was standing by, described to 
me a set of plates by that artist, called his 
Dreams, and which record the scenery of 
his own visions during the delirium of a 
fever. Some of them (I describe only from 
memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) repre- 
sented vast Gothic halls : on the floor of 
which stood all sorts of engines and ma- 
chinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, 
catapults, &c. &c. expressive of enormous 
power put forth, and resistance overcome. 
Creeping along the sides of the walls, you 
perceived a staircase ; and upon it, groping 
his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: 
follow the stairs a little further, and you 
perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termi- 
nation, without any balustrade, and allowing 
no step onwards to him who had reached 
the extremity, except into the depths below. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 165 

Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, 

you suppose, at least, that his labours must 

in some way terminate here. But raise 

your eyes, and behold a second flight of 

stairs still higher : on which again Piranesi 

is perceived, but this time standing on the 

very brink of the abyss. Again elevate 

your eye, and a still more aerial flight of 

stairs is beheld : and again is poor Piranesi 

busy on his aspiring labours : and so on, 

until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both 

are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. — 

With the same pow 7 er of endless growth and 

self-reproduction did my architecture pro- 

ceed in dreams. In the early stage of my 

malady, the splendours of my dreams were 

indeed chiefly architectural : and I beheld 

such pomp of cities and palaces as was never 

yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the 

clouds. From a great modern poet I cite 

part of a passage which describes, as an 

appearance actually beheld in the clouds, 

what in many of its circumstances I saw 

frequently in sleep ; 

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city— boldly say 



166 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

A wilderness of building, sinking far 
And self- withdrawn into a wondrous depth, 
Far sinking into splendour — without end ! 
Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold, 
With alabaster domes, and silver spires, 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright 
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! 
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
Upon the dark materials of the storm 
Now pacified : on them, and on the coves, 
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
The vapours had receded, — taking there 
Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c. 

The sublime circumstance — " battle- 
ments that on their restless fronts bore 
stars," — might have been copied from my 
architectural dreams, for it often occurred. 
— We hear it reported of Dry den, and of 
Fuseli in modern times, that they thought 
proper to eat raw meat for the sake of 
obtaining splendid dreams : how much bet- 
ter for such a purpose to have eaten opium, 
which yet I do not remember that any poet 
is recorded to have done, except the dra- 
matist Shadwell ; and in ancient days. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 167 

Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have 
known the virtues of opium. 

To my architecture succeeded dreams of 
lakes — and silvery expanses of water: — 
these haunted me so much, that I feared 
(though possibly it will appear ludicrous to 
a medical man) that some dropsical state or 
tendency of the brain might thus be making 
itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective; 
and the sentient organ project itself as its 
own object. — For two months I suffered 
greatly in my head — a part of my bodily 
structure which had hitherto been so clear 
from all touch or taint of weakness (physi- 
cally, I mean,) that I used to say of it, as 
the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, 
that it seemed likely to survive the rest of 
my person. — Till now I had never felt a 
headach even, or any the slightest pain, 
except rheumatic pains caused by my own 
folly. However, I got over this attack, 
though it must have been verging on some- 
thing very dangerous. 

The waters now changed their character, 
-r-from translucent lakes, shining like mir-? 



168 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

rors, they now became seas and oceans. 
And now came a tremendous change, which, 
unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through 
many months, promised an abiding torment ; 
and, in fact, it never left me until the wind- 
ing up of my case. Hitherto the human face 
had mixed often in my dreams, but not 
despotically, nor with any special power of 
tormenting. But now that which I have 
called the tyranny of the human face began 
to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my 
London life might be answerable for this. 
Be that as it may, now it was that upon the 
rocking waters of the ocean the human face 
began to appear : the sea appeared paved 
with innumerable faces, upturned to the 
heavens : faces, imploring, wrathful, despair- 
ing, surged upwards by thousands, by my- 
riads, by generations, by centuries: — my 
agitation was infinite, — my mind tossed — 
and surged with the ocean. 

May, 1818. 
The Malay has been a fearful enemy for 
months. I have been every night, through 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 169 

his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. 
I know not whether others share in my 
feelings on this point; but I have often 
thought that if I were compelled to forego 
England, and to live in China, and among 
Chinese manners and modes of life and 
scenery, I should go mad. The causes of 
my horror lie deep ; and some of them must 
be common to others. Southern Asia, in 
general, is the seat of awful images and 
associations. As the cradle of the human 
race, it would alone have a dim and reve- 
rential feeling connected with it. But there 
are other reasons. No man can pretend 
that the wild, barbarous, and capricious 
superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes 
elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is 
affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, 
and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. 
The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of 
their institutions, histories, modes of faith, 
&c. is so impressive, that to me the vast age 
of the race and name overpowers the sense 
of youth in the individual. A young Chi- 
nese seems to me an antediluvian man 
renewed. Even Englishmen, though not 



170 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

bred in any knowledge of such institutions* 
cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity 
of castes that have flowed apart, and refused 
to mix, through such immemorial tracts of 
time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by 
the names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates. 
It contributes much to these feelings, that 
Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands 
of years, the part of the earth most swarm- 
ing with human life ; the great officina gen- 
tium* Man is a weed in those regions. 
The vast empires also, into which the enor- 
mous population of Asia has always been 
cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings 
associated with all Oriental names or 
images. In China, over and above what it 
has in common with the rest of Southern 
Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, 
by the manners, and the barrier of utter 
abhorrence, and want of sympathy, placed 
between us by feelings deeper than I can 
analyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, 
or brute animals. All this, and much more 
than I can say, or have time to say, the 
reader must enter into before he can com- 
prehend the unimaginable horror which 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 171 

these dreams of Oriental imagery, and my- 
thological tortures, impressed upon me. 
Under the connecting feeling of tropical 
heat and vertical sun-lights, I brought toge- 
ther all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all 
trees and plants, usages and appearances, 
that are found in all tropical regions, and 
assembled them together in China or In- 
dostan. From kindred feelings, I soon 
brought Egypt and all her gods under the 
same law. I was stared at, hooted at, 
grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by 
paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pago- 
das : and was fixed, for centuries, at the 
summit, or in secret rooms ; I was the idol ; 
I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was 
sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama 
through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu 
hated me : Seeva laid wait for me. I came 
suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had done 
a deed, they said, which the ibis and the 
crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a 
thousand years, in stone coffins, with mum- 
mies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at 
the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, 
with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; and 
i2 



172 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy 
things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 

I thus give the reader some slight ab- 
straction of my Oriental dreams, which 
always filled me with such amazement at 
the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed 
absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment. 
Sooner or later, came a reflux of feeling 
that swallowed up the astonishment, and 
left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred 
and abomination of what" I saw. Over 
every form, and threat, and punishment, 
and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a 
sense of eternity and infinity that drove me 
into an oppression as of madness. Into 
these dreams only, it was, with one or two 
slight exceptions, that any circumstances 
of physical horror entered. All before had 
been moral and spiritual terrors. But here 
the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, 
or crocodiles ; especially the last. The 
cursed crocodile became to me the object 
of more horror than almost all the rest. 
I was compielled to live with him ; and (as 
was always the case almost in my dreams) 
for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 173 

found myself in Chinese houses, with cane 
tables, &c. All the feet of the tables, 
sofas, &c. soon became instinct with life: 
the abominable head of the crocodile, 
and his leering eyes, looked out at me; 
multiplied into a thousand repetitions : and 
I stood loathing and fascinated. And 
so often did this hideous reptile haunt 
my dreams, that many times the very same 
dream was broken up in the very same 
way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me 
(I hear every thing when I am sleeping) ; 
and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon; 
and my children were standing, hand in 
hand, at my bed-side ; come to show me 
their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or 
to let me see them dressed for going out. 
I protest that so awful was the transi- 
tion from the damned crocodile, and the 
other unutterable monsters and abortions 
of my dreams, to the sight of innocent 
human natures and of infancy, that, in the 
mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I 
wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed 
their faces. 



1?4 CONCESSIONS OF AN 

June, 1819. 
I have had occasion to remark, at various 
periods of my life, that the deaths of those 
whom we love, and indeed the contempla- 
tion of death generally, is (cczteris paribus) 
more affecting in summer than in any other 
season of the year. And the reasons are 
these three, I think : first, that the visible 
heavens in summer appear far higher, more 
distant, and (if such a solecism may be 
excused) more infinite ; the clouds, by 
which chiefly the eye expounds the distance 
of the blue pavilion stretched over our 
heads, are in summer more voluminous, 
massed, and accumulated in far grander and 
more towering piles : secondly, the light 
and the appearances of the declining and the 
setting sun are much more fitted to be 
types and characters of the Infinite : and, 
thirdly, (which is the main reason) the 
exuberant and riotous prodigality of life 
naturally forces the mind more powerfully 
upon the antagonist thought of death, and 
the wintry sterility of the grave. For it 
may be observed, generally, that wherever 
two thoughts stand related to each other by 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 175 

a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, 
by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest 
each other. On these accounts it is that 
I find it impossible to banish the thought 
of death when I am walking alone in the 
endless days of summer ; and any particular 
death, if not more affecting, at least haunts 
my mind more obstinately and besiegingly 
in that season. Perhaps this cause, and 
a slight incident which I omit, might have 
been the immediate occasions of the fol- 
lowing dream ; to which, however, a pre- 
disposition must always have existed in 
my mind; but having been once roused, it 
never left me, and split into a thousand fantas- 
tic varieties, which often suddenly re-united, 
and composed again the original dream. 

I thought that it was a Sunday morning 
in May, that it was Easter Sunday, and as 
yet very early in the morning. I was 
standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of 
my own cottage. Right before me lay the 
very scene which could really be command- 
ed from that situation, but exalted, as was 
usual, and solemnized by the power of 
dreams. There were the same mountains, 



176 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

and the same lovely valley at their feet; 
but the mountains were raised to more than 
Alpine height, and there was interspace far 
larger between them of meadows and forest 
lawns ; the hedges were rich with white 
roses ; and no living creature was to be 
seen, excepting that in the green church- 
yard there were cattle tranquilly reposing 
upon the verdant graves, and particularly 
round about the grave of a child whom I 
had tenderly loved, just as I had really 
beheld them, a little before sun-rise in the 
same summer, when that child died. I gazed 
upon the well-known scene, and I said 
aloud (as I thought) to myself, " It yet 
wants much of sun-rise ; and it is Easter 
Sunday ; and that is the day on which they 
celebrate the first-fruits of resurrection. 
I will walk abroad ; old griefs shall be for- 
gotten to-day ; for the air is cool and still, 
and the hills are high, and stretch away to 
heaven ; and the forest-glades are as quiet 
as the churchyard ; and, with the dew, I 
can wash the fever from my forehead, and 
then I shall be unhappy no longer." And 
I turned, as if to open my garden gate; 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 177 

and immediately I saw upon the left a scene 
far different ; but which yet the power of 
dreams had reconciled into harmony with 
the other. The scene was an Oriental one ; 
and there also it was Easter Sunday, and 
very early in the morning. And at a vast 
distance were visible, as a stain upon the 
horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great 
city — an image or faint abstraction, caught 
perhaps in childhood from some picture of 
Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, 
upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, 
there sat a woman; and I looked; and it 
was — Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me 
earnestly; and I said to her at length: a So 
then I have found you at last." I waited : 
but she answered me not a word. Her face 
was the same as when I saw it last, and yet 
again how different! Seventeen years ago, 
when the lamp-light fell upon her face, as 
for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann,, 
that to me were not polluted), her eyes were 
streaming with tears : the tears were now 
wiped away ; she seemed more beautiful 
than she was at that time, but in all other 
i5 



178 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

points the same, and not older. Her looks 
were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity 
of expression ; and I now gazed upon her 
with some awe, but suddenly her counte- 
nance grew dim, and, turning to the moun- 
tains, I perceived vapours rolling between 
us ; in a moment all had vanished ; thick 
darkness came on ; and, in the twinkling of 
an eye, I was far away from mountains, and 
by lamp -light in Oxford - street, walking 
again with Ann — just as we walked seven- 
teen years before, when we were both 
children. 

As a final specimen, I cite one of a differ- 
ent character, from 1820. 

The dream commenced with a music 
which now I often heard in dreams — a 
music of preparation and of awakening sus- 
pense ; a music like the opening of the 
Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, 
gave the feeling of a vast march — of infinite 
cavalcades filing off — and the tread of in- 
numerable armies. The morning was come 
of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 179 

final hope for human nature, then suffering 
some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in 
some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew 
not where — somehow, I knew not how — 
by some beings, I knew not whom — a 
battle, a strife, &n agony, was conducting, — 
was evolving like a great drama, or piece of 
music ; with which my sympathy was the 
more insupportable from my confusion as 
to its place, its cause, its nature, and its 
possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams 
(where, of necessity, we make ourselves 
central to every movement), had the power, 
and yet had not the power, to decide it. I 
had the power, if I could raise myself, to 
will it ; and yet again had not the power, 
for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon 
me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. 
<e Deeper than ever plummet sounded/' I 
lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the 
passion deepened. Some greater interest 
was at stake ; some mightier cause than 
ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet 
had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; 
hurryings to and fro : trepidations of innu- 



180 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

merable fugitives, I knew not whether from 
the good cause or the bad : darkness and 
lights : tempest and human faces : and at 
last, with the sense that all was lost, female 
forms, and the features that were worth all 
the world to me, and but a moment allowed, 
— and clasped hands, and heart-breaking 
partings, and then — everlasting farewells: 
and with a sigh, such as the caves of hell 
sighed when the incestuous mother uttered 
the abhorred name of death, the sound was 
reverberated — everlasting farewells ! and 
again, and yet again reverberated — ever- 
lasting farewells ! 

And I awoke in struggles, and cried 
aloud — " I will sleep no more?" 

But I am now called upon to wind up a 
narrative which has already extended to an 
unreasonable length. Within more spacious 
limits, the materials which I have used 
might have been better unfolded ; and much 
which I have not used might have been 
added with effect. Perhaps, however, 
enough has been given. It now remains 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 181 

that I should say something of the way in 
which this conflict of horrors was finally 
brought to its crisis. The reader is already 
aware (from a passage near the beginning 
of the introduction to the first part) that 
the opium-eater has, in some way or other, 
" unwound, almost to its final links, the 
accursed chain which bound him." By 
what means? To have narrated this, ac- 
cording to the original intention, would 
have far exceeded the space which can now 
be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a 
cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I 
should, on a maturer view of the case, have 
been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by 
any such unaffecting details, the impression 
of the history itself, as an appeal to the 
prudence and the conscience of the yet un- 
confirmed opium-eater — or even (though a 
very inferior consideration) to injure its 
effect as a composition. The interest of 
the judicious reader will not attach itself 
chiefly to the subject of the fascinating 
spells, but to the fascinating power. Not 
the opium-eater, but the opium, is the true 



182 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

hero of the tale ; and the legitimate centre 
on which the interest revolves. The object 
was to display the marvellous agency of 
opium, whether for pleasure or for pain : if 
that is done, the action of the piece has 
closed. 

However, as some people, in spite of all 
laws to the contrary, will persist in asking 
what became of the opium-eater, and in 
what state he now is, I answer for him 
thus : The reader is aware that opium had 
long ceased to found its empire on spells of 
pleasure ; it was solely by the tortures con- 
nected with the attempt to abjure it, that it 
kept its hold. Yet, as other tortures, no 
less it may be thought, attended the non- 
abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only 
of evils was left : and that might as well 
have been adopted, which, however terrific 
in itself, held out a prospect of final resto- 
ration to happiness. This appears true ; 
but good logic gave the author no strength 
to act upon it. However, a crisis arrived 
for the author's life, and a crisis for other 
objects still dearer to him — and which will 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 183 

always be far dearer to him than his life, 
even now that it is again a happy one. — 
saw that I must die if I continued the 
opium : I determined, therefore, if that 
should be required, to die in throwing it off. 
How much I was at that time taking I 
cannot say ; for the opium which I used 
had been purchased for me by a friend who 
afterwards refused to let me pay him ; so 
that I could not ascertain even what quan- 
tity I had used within the year. I appre- 
hend, however, that I took it very irregu- 
larly : and that I varied from about fifty or 
sixty grains, to 150 a-day. My first task 
was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and, as 
fast as I could, to twelve grains. 

I triumphed : but think not, reader, that 
therefore my sufferings were ended ; nor 
think of me as of one sitting in a dejected 
state. Think of me as of one, even when 
four months had passed, still agitated, 
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered ; 
and much, perhaps, in the situation of him 
who has been racked, as I collect the tor- 
ments of that state from the affecting ac- 



184 CONFESSIONS OF AN 

count of the mi left by the most innocent 
sufferer^ (of the times of James I.) Mean- 
time, I derived no benefit from any medi- 
cine, except one prescribed to me by an 
Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz. 
ammoniated tincture of Valerian. Medical 
account, therefore, of my emancipation I 
have not much to give : and even that little, 
as managed by a man so ignorant of medi- 
cine as myself, would probably tend only 
to mislead. At all events, it would be mis- 
placed in this situation. The moral of the 
narrative is addressed to the opium-eater ; 
and therefore, of necessity, limited in its 
application. If he is taught to fear and 
tremble, enough has been effected. But he 
may say, that the issue of my case is at 
least a proof that opium, after a seventeen 
years' use, and an eight years' abuse of its 
powers, may still be renounced : and that 
he may chance to bring to the task greater 

* William Lithgow : his book (Travels, &c.) is ill 
and pedantically written : but the account of his own 
sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly 
affecting. 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 185 

energy than" I did, or that with a stronger 
constitution than mine he may obtain the 
same results with less. This may be true :•■ 
I would not presume to measure the efforts 
of other men by my own : I heartily wish 
him more energy : I wish him the same 
success. Nevertheless, I had motives ex- 
ternal to myself which he may unfortunately 
want : and these supplied me with con- 
scientious supports which mere personal 
interests might fail to supply to a mind 
debilitated by opium. 

Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be 
as painful to be born as to die : I think it 
probable : and, during the whole period of 
diminishing the opium, I had the torments 
of a man passing out of one mode of exist- 
ence into another. The issue was not death, 
but a sort of physical regeneration : and I 
may add, that ever since, at intervals, I 
have had a restoration of more than youth- 
ful spirits, though under the pressure of 
difficulties, which, in a less happy state 
of mind, I should have called misfortunes. 

One memorial of my former condition 



186 CONFESSIONS, &C. 

still remains : my dreams are not yet per- 
fectly calm : the dread swell and agitation 
of the storm have not wholly subsided : the 
legions that encamped in them are drawing 
off, but not all departed : my sleep is still 
tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise 
to our first parents when looking back from 
afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of 
Milton)— 

With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms. 



APPENDIX. 



The proprietors of this little work having 
determined on reprinting it, some explana- 
tion seems called for, to account for the 
non-appearance of a Third Part promised in 
the London Magazine of December last; 
and the more so, because the proprietors, 
under whose guarantee that promise was 
issued, might otherwise be implicated in 
the blame — little or much — attached to 
its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere 
justice, the author takes wholly upon him- 
self. ¥/hat may be the exact amount of 
the guilt which he thus appropriates, is a 
very dark question to his own judgment, 
and not much illuminated by any of the 
masters in casuistry whom he has consulted 
on the occasion. On the one hand, it seems 
generally agreed that a promise is binding 



188 APPENDIX. 

in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom 
it is made : for which reason it is that we 
see many persons break promises without 
scruple that are made to a whole nation, 
who keep their faith religiously in all 
private engagements, — breaches of promise 
towards the stronger party being committed 
at a man's own peril : on the other hand, 
the only parties interested in the promises 
of an author are his readers ; and these it 
is a point of modesty in any author to 
believe as few as possible ; or perhaps only 
one, in which case any promise imposes a 
sanctity of moral obligation w T hich it is 
shocking to think of. Casuistry dismissed 
however, — the author throws himself on 
the indulgent consideration of all who may 
conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay 
— in the following account of his own con- 
dition from the end of last year, when the 
engagement was made, up nearly to the 
present time. For any purpose of self- 
excuse, it might be sufficient to say that 
intolerable bodily suffering had totally 
disabled him for almost any exertion of 
mind, more especially for such as demand 



APPENDIX. 189 

and presuppose a pleasurable and genial 
state of feeling : but, as a case that may by 
possibility contribute a trifle to the medical 
history of Opium in a further stage of its 
action than can often have been brought 
under the notice of professional men, he 
has judged that it might be acceptable to 
some readers to have it described more at 
length. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili is 
a just rule where there is any reasonable 
presumption of benefit to arise on a large 
scale ; what the benefit may be, will admit 
of a doubt : but there can be none as to 
the value of the body : for a more worthless 
body than his own, the author is free to 
confess, cannot be : it is his pride to believe 
— that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, 
despicable human system— that hardly 
ever could have been meant to be sea- 
worthy for two days under the ordinary 
storms and wear-and-tear of life ? and in- 
deed, if that were the creditable way of 
disposing of human bodies, he must own 
that he should almost be ashamed to be- 
queath his wretched structure to any re- 
spectable dog. — But now to the case ; 



190 APPENDIX. 

which, for the sake of avoiding the constant 
recurrence of a cumbersome periphrasis, 
the author will take the liberty of giving in 
the first person. 



Those who have read the Confessions 
will have closed them with the impression 
that I had wholly renounced the use of 
Opium. This impression I meant to convey : 
and that for two reasons : first, because the 
very act of deliberately recording such a 
state of suffering necessarily presumes in 
the recorder a power of surveying his own 
case as a cool spectator, and a degree of 
spirits for adequately describing it, which 
it would be inconsistent to suppose in any 
person speaking from the station of an 
actual sufferer : secondly, because I, who 
had descended from so large a quantity as 
8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively 
speaking) as a quantity ranging between 
300 and 160 drops, might well suppose that 
the victory was in effect achieved. In suf- 
fering my readers therefore to think of me 
as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no 
impression but what I shared myself; and^ 



APPENDIX. 191 

as may be seen, even this impression was 
left to be collected from the general tone of 
the conclusion, and not from any specific 
words— which are in no instance at variance 
with the literal truth. — In no long time 
after that paper was written, I became sen- 
sible that the effort which remained would 
cost me far more energy than I had antici- 
pated : and the necessity for making it was 
more apparent every month. In particular 
I became aware of an increasing callousness 
or defect of sensibility in the stomach ; and 
this I imagined might imply a schirrous 
state of that organ either formed or forming., 
An eminent physician, to whose kindness I 
was at that time deeply indebted, informed 
me that such a termination of my case was 
not impossible, though likely to be fore- 
stalled by a different termination, in the 
event of my continuing the use of opium. 
Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure, 
as soon as I should find myself at liberty to 
bend my undivided attention and energy to 
this purpose. It was not however until the 
24th of June last that any tolerable concur- 
rence of facilities for such an attempt 



192 APPENDIX. 

arrived. On that day I began my experi- 
ment, having previously settled in my own 
mind that I would not flinch, but would 
" stand up to the scratch" — under any 
possible " punishment." I must premise 
that about 170 or 180 drops had been my 
ordinary allowance for many months : occa- 
sionally I had run up as high as 500 ; and 
once nearly to 700 : in repeated preludes to 
my final experiment I had also gone as low 
as 100 drops ; but had found it impossible 
to stand it beyond the 4th day — which, by 
the way, I have always found more difficult 
to get over than any of the preceding three. 
I went off under easy sail — 130 drops a 
day for 3 days : on the 4th I plunged at 
once to 80 : the misery which I now suffered 
" took the conceit" out of me at once : and 
for about a month I continued off and on 
about this mark : then I sunk to 60 : and 

the next day to none at all. This was 

the first day for nearly ten years that I had 
existed without opium. I persevered in 
my abstinence for 90 hours; i.e. upwards 

of half a week. Then I took ask me 

not how much : say, ye severest, what 



APPENDIX. 193 

would ye have done? then I abstained again: 
then took about 25 drops : then abstained : 
and so on. 

Meantime the symptoms which attended 
my case for the first six weeks of the expe- 
riment were these: — enormous irritability 
and excitement of the whole system: the 
stomach in particular restored to a full feel- 
ing of vitality and sensibility; but often in 
great pain : unceasing restlessness night 

and day ; sleep 1 scarcely knew what 

it was : 3 hours out of the 24 was the ut- 
most I had, and that so agitated and shallow 
that I heard every sound that was near me : 
lower jaw constantly swelling: mouth ulcer- 
ated : and many other distressing symp- 
toms that would be tedious to repeat ; 
amongst which however I must mention 
one, because it had never failed to accom- 
pany any attempt to renounce opium — viz. 
violent sternutation : this now became ex- 
ceedingly troublesome : sometimes lasting 
for 2 hours at once, and recurring at least 
twice or three times a day. I was not much 
surprised at this, on recollecting what I had 
somewhere heard or read, that the mem- 

K 



194 APPENDIX. 

brane which lines the nostrils is a prolon- 
gation of that which lines the stomach ; 
whence I believe are explained the inflam- 
matory appearances about the nostrils of 
dram-drinkers. The sudden restoration of 
its original sensibility to the stomach ex- 
pressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is 
remarkable also that, during the whole pe- 
riod of years through which I had taken 
opium, I had never once caught cold (as the 
phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. 
But now a violent cold attacked me, and 
a cough soon after. In an unfinished frag- 
ment of a letter begun about this time to 
— — I find these words : " You ask me to 
write the . Do you know Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's play of Thierry and 
Theodoret? There you will see my case as 
to sleep : nor is it much of an exaggeration 
in other features. — I protest to you that I 
have a greater influx of thoughts in one 
hour at present than in a whole year under 
the reign of opium. It seems as though all 
the thoughts which had been frozen up for 
a decad of years by opium, had now accord- 
ing to the old fable been thawed at once — 



APPENDIX. 195 

such a multitude stream in. upon me from 
all quarters. Yet such is my impatience 
and hideous irritability— -that, for one which 

1 detain and write down, 50 escape me : in 
spite of my weariness from suffering and 
want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit for 

2 minutes together. ' I nunc, et versus 
tecum meditare canoros.' " 

At this stage of my experiment I sent to 
a neighbouring surgeon, requesting that he 
would come over to see me. In the evening 
he came : and after briefly stating the case 
to him, I asked this question: — Whether 
he did not think that the opium might have 
acted as a stimulus to the digestive organs ; 
and that the present state of suffering in the 
stomach, which manifestly was the cause of 
the inability to sleep, might arise from indi- 
gestion ? His answer was — No : on the 
contrary he thought that the suffering was 
caused by digestion itself — which should 
naturally go on below the consciousness, 
but which from the unnatural state of the 
stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, 
was become distinctly perceptible. This 
opinion w T as plausible : and theunintermitting 
k2 



J96 APPENDIX. 

nature of the suffering disposes me to think 
that it was true : for, if it had been any 
mere irregular affection of the stomach, it 
should naturally have intermitted occasion- 
ally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. 
The intention of nature, as manifested 
in the healthy state, obviously is — to 
withdraw from our notice all the vital mo- 
tions, such as the circulation of the blood, 
the expansion and contraction of the lungs, 
the peristaltic action of the stomach, 
&c. ; and opium, it seems, is able in this 
as in other instances to counteract her 
purposes. — By the advice of the surgeon I 
tried bitters: for a short time these greatly 
mitigated the feelings under which I labour- 
ed : but about the forty-second day of the 
experiment the symptoms already noticed 
began to retire, and new ones to arise of a 
different and far more tormenting class : 
under these, but with a few intervals of 
remission, I have since continued to suffer. 
But I dismiss them undescribed for two 
reasons : 1st, because the mind revolts from 
retracing circumstantially any sufferings 
from which it is removed by too short or by 



appendix* 197 

no interval: to do this with minuteness 
enough to make the review of any use — - 
would be indeed " infandum renovare dolo- 
rem" and possibly without a sufficient 
motive : for 2dly, I doubt whether this 
latter state be any way referable to opium 
— positively considered, or even negatively ; 
that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst 
the last evils from the direct action of opium, 
or even amongst the earliest evils conse- 
quent upon a want of opium in a system 
long deranged by its use. Certainly one 
part of the symptoms might be accounted 
for from the time of year (August) : for, 
though the summer was not a hot one, yet in 
any case the sum of all the heat funded (if 
one may say so) during the previous months, 
added to the existing heat of that month, 
naturally renders August in its better half 
the hottest part of the year : and it so hap- 
pened that the excessive perspiration, which 
even at Christmas attends any great reduc- 
tion in the daily quantum of opium — and 
which in July was so violent as to oblige 
me to use a bath five or six times a day, had 



198 APPENDIX. 

about the setting in of the hottest season 
wholly retired : on which account any bad 
effect of the heat might be the more unmiti- 
gated. Another symptom, viz. what in my 
ignorance I call internal rheumatism (some- 
times affecting the shoulders, &c, but more 
often appearing to be seated in the stomach), 
seemed again less probably attributable to 
the opium or the want of opium than to the 
dampness of the house # which I inhabit, 
which had about that time attained its 
maximum — July having been, as usual, a 
month of incessant rain in our most rainy 
part of England. 

Under these reasons for doubting whether 
opium had any connexion with the latter 

* In saying this I mean no disrespect to the indivi- 
dual house, as the reader will understand when I tell 
hirn that, with the exception of one or two princely 
mansions and some few inferior ones that have been 
coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with 
any house in this mountainous district which is wholly 
water-proof. The architecture of books, I natter myself, 
is conducted on just principles in this county : but fin- 
ally other architecture — it is in a barbarous state ; and, 
what is worse, in a retrograde state. 



APPENDIX. 199 

stage of my bodily wretchedness — (except 
indeed as an occasional cause, as having left 
the body weaker and more crazy, and thus pre- 
disposed to any mal-influence whatever), — I 
willingly spare my reader all description of it : 
let it perish to him : and would that I could 
as easily say, let it perish to my own remem- 
brances : that any future hours of tranquil- 
lity may not be disturbed by too vivid an 
ideal of possible human misery ! 

So much for the sequel of my experiment : 
as to the former stage, in which properly 
lies the experiment and its application to 
other cases, I must request my reader not 
to forget the reasons for which I have 
recorded it: these were two: 1st, a belief 
that I might add some trifle to the history 
of opium as a medical agent : in this I am 
aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own 
intentions, in consequence of the torpor of 
mind — pain of body — and extreme disgust 
to the subject which besieged me whilst 
writing that part of my paper ; which part, 
being immediately sent off to the press 
(distant about five degrees of latitude), can- 
not be corrected or improved. But from 



200 



APPENDIX. 



this account, rambling as it may be, it is 
evident that thus much of benefit may arise 
to the persons most interested in such a 
history of opium — viz. to opium-eaters in 
general — that it establishes, for their con- 
solation and encouragement, the fact that 
opium may be renounced ; and without 
greater sufferings than an ordinary resolu- 
tion may support ; and by a pretty rapid 
course # of descent. 

* On which last notice I would remark that mine 
was too rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly 
aggravated : or rather perhaps it w as not sufficiently con- 
tinuous and equably graduated. But, that the reader 
may judge for himself— and above all that the opium- 
eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may 
have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my 
diary : 



FIRST WEEK. 



SECOND WEEK. 



Mond.June 24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 



Drops of Laud. 
. 130 

• 140 
. 130 
. 80 

• 80 
- 80 
. 80 



Mond. July 1 



— 3 

4 



6 

7 



Drops of Laud. 

.. 80 

.. 80 

.. 90 

.. 100 

•♦ 80 

•• 80 

-. 80 



APPENDIX. 



201 



To communicate this result of my expe- 
riment—was my foremost purpose. 2dly, 



THIRD WEEK. 

Drops of Laud. 

Mond.July 8 300 

9 50 

10^ 

- 11 f Hiatus in 



— 12 i 



MS. 



13 
14 



76 



FOURTH WEEK. 

Drops of Laud 

Mond. July 15 
16 

17 

-18 

19 

< 20 

— 21 



76 
73| 

7S\ 

. 70 

240 

80 

350 



FIFTH WEEK. 



Mond. July 22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 



Drops of Laud. 
60 



none 

none 

none 

200 

none. 



What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask 
perhaps, to such numbers as 300 — 350, &c. ? The 
impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose : 
the motive, where any motive blended with this impulse, 
was either the principle of " reculer pour mieux sauter ;" 
(for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a 
day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach — 
which, on awaking, found itself partly accustomed to 
this new ration) : or else it was this principle — that of 
sufferings otherwise equal those will be borne best which 
K 5 



202 APPENDIX. 

as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to 
explain how it had become impossible for 
me to compose a Third Part in time to 
accompany this republication : for during 
the very time of this experiment, the proof 
sheets of this reprint were sent to me from 
London : and such was my inability to expand 
or to improve them, that I could not even 
bear to read them over with attention enough 
to notice the press errors, or to correct any 
verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons 
for troubling my reader with any record, 
long or short, of experiments relating to so 
truly base a subject as my own body : and I 
am earnest with the reader that he will not 
forget them, or so far misapprehend me as to 
believe it possible that I would condescend 
to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or 
indeed for any less object than that of ge- 
neral benefit to others. Such an animal as 
the self-observing valetudinarian — I know 
there is : I have met him myself occasion- 
meet with a mood of anger; now, whenever I ascended 
to any large dose, I was furiously incensed on the fol- 
lowing day, and could then have borne any thing. 



APPENDIX. 203 

ally: and I know that he is the worst ima- 
ginable heautontimoroumenos ; aggravating 
and sustaining, by calling into distinct con- 
sciousness, every symptom that would else 
perhaps — under a different direction given 
to the thoughts — become evanescent. But 
as to myself, so profound is my contempt 
for this undignified and selfish habit, that I 
could as little condescend to it as I could 
to spend my time in watching a poor ser- 
vant girl — to whom at this moment I hear 
some lad or other making love at the back 
of my house. Is it for a Transcendental 
Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an 
occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth 
only 8 \ years' purchase, be supposed to 
have leisure for such trivial employments? 
-— However, to put this out of question, I 
shall say one thing, which will perhaps 
shock some readers : but I am sure it ought 
not to do so, considering the motives on 
which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs 
much of his time on the phenomena of his 
own body without some regard for it; 
whereas the reader sees that, so far from 



204 APPENDIX. 

looking upon mine with any complacency 
or regard, I" hate it and make it the object 
of my bitter ridicule and contempt : and I 
should not be displeased to know that the 
last indignities which the law inflicts upon 
the bodies of the worst malefactors might 
hereafter fall upon it. And in testification 
of my sincerity in saying this, I shall make 
the following offer. Like other men, I have 
particular fancies about the place of my 
burial : having lived chiefly in a mountain- 
ous region, I rather cleave to the conceit 
that a grave in a green church yard amongst 
the ancient and solitary hills will be a sub- 
limer and more tranquil place of repose for 
a philosopher than any in the hideous Gol- 
gothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of 
Surgeons' Hall think that any benefit can 
redound to their science from inspecting the 
appearances in the body of an opium-eater, 
let them speak but a word, and I will take 
care that mine shall be legally secured to 

them i. e. as soon as I have done with 

it myself. Let them not hesitate to express 
their wishes upon any scruples of false 



APPENDIX. 205 

delicacy, and consideration for my feelings : 
I assure them they will do me too much 
honour by ' demonstrating' on such a crazy 
body as mine : and it will give me pleasure 
to anticipate this posthumous revenge and 
insult inflicted upon that which has caused 
me so much suffering in this life. Such 
bequests are not common : reversionary 
benefits contingent upon the death of the 
testator are indeed dangerous to announce 
in many cases : of this we have a remark- 
able instance in the habits of a Roman 
prince — who used, upon any notification 
made to him by rich persons that they had 
left him a handsome estate in their wills, to 
express his entire satisfaction at such ar- 
rangements, and his gracious acceptance 
of those loyal legacies : but then, if the 
testators neglected to give him immediate 
possession of the property, if they traitor- 
ously i persisted in living' (si vivere perseve- 
rarent, as Suetonius expresses it), he was 
highly provoked, and took his measures 
accordingly. — In those times, and from one 
of the worst of the Caesars, we might expect 



206 APPENDIX. 

such conduct : but I am sure that from 
English surgeons at this day I need look for 
no expressions of impatience, or of any other 
feelings but such as are answerable to that 
pure love of science and all its interests 
which induces me to make such an offer. 

Sept. ZOth, 1822. 



THE END. 



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THE LONDON MAGAZINE, 

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The attention of the Public is particularly requested to this 
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The following are a few of the valuable Series of Papers that 
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Three Papers. 
On the Works of John Paul Richter, by the Author of the 

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, with Translations of 

The Happy Life of a Parish Priest in Sweden : from Richter — 
The last Will and Testament; the House of Weeping: from Richter. 

Essays of Elia, viz. 
The South-Sea House — Oxford in the Vacation — Christ's Hospital 
Five-and-thirty Years ago — the Two Races of Men — New Year's 
Eve — Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist — a Chapter on Ears — All 
Fools' Day — a Quakers' Meeting — the Old and the New School- 
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— the Old Benchers of the Inner Temple — Grace before Meat — 
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on some of the Old Actors — on the Artificial Comedy of the last 
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the Gentle Giantess, &c. 

Continuation of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Thirteen 
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Consisting of the Lives of Thomas Warton — Sir William Jones — 
Anstey — Goldsmith — Joseph Warton — R. Owen Cambridge — 
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Darwin. 

Notices of the Early French Poets, with Specimens and Trans- 
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Thibaut, King of Navarre — Clement Marot — Antoine Heroet— Mellin 
de Saint Gelais — Hugues Salel — Olivier de Magny — Joachim 
du Bellay — Remy Belleau — Jan Antoine de Baif — Jan de la 
Peruse — Estienne Jodelle — Pierre de Ronsard — Philippe Desportes 

— Jean Bertaut — Maurice Sceve — and Guillaume des Autels. 



Contents of the London Magazine, 

Letters of Edward Herbert, Esq. to the Family of the Powells; viz. 

Account of the Coronation — Greenwich Hospital — Warwick Castle — 
Bradgate Park, the Residence of Lady Jane Grey — the Green 
Room — the Inside of a Stage Coach — the Cockpit Royal. 

Table Talk. Thirteen Numbers. 

Essays by the Author of Table Talk ; viz. 

On the Elgin Marbles, tw r o papers, with an Engraving of the Ilissus — 
Fonthill Abbey — Mr. Angerstein's Collection of Pictures. 

Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry, and 
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Beauties of the Living Dramatists. Six Numbers ; viz. 

Virtue's Harvest Home, by T— M— , Esq.— Britain's Glory, by 
T — D — , Esq. — the River Rock, or the Crimson Hermits, a Melo- 
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Don Giovanni XVIII., by M. M — ff : — and Processions. 

Cornelius Van Vinkbooms, his Dogmas for Dillettanti, &c. 

Account of the Exhibition — Dogmas, No. 1. Michael Angelo — No. 2. 
Giulio Romano — No. 3. The Amateur's Boudoir. 

Several Letters of Janus Weathercock, Esq. on the Fine Arts, &c. 

Three Papers by Thurma ; viz. 

Westminster Abbey — the Antiquary — on Pleasant and Unpleasant 
People. 

Leisure Hours, consisting of Translations from and Remarks 
upon the Greek and Latin Classic Authors ; viz. 

1. On Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice — 2. A New Translation 
of the Frogs and Mice— 3. On the Homeric Poematia — 4. Bacchus, 
or the Pirates, from the Homeric Hymns — 5. On the English 
Standard Hen ic — 6. Homer's Hymn to Pan — 7. Homer's Hymn 
to Ceres — 8. On Catullus, with Two Translations — 9. Defence of 
Propertius — 10- New Translations of Propertius — 11. On the 
Poetry of Nonnus, with Translations — 12. The Story ofAmpelus, 
from Nonnus — 13. On the Supplemental Iliad of Quintus Calaber, 
with Translations. 

Sketches on the Road, written from various Parts of Italy. 
Additions to Lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors. Six 
Numbers ; viz. 

King James I. — King Charles I. — Queen Elizabeth — Lord Delamer — 
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester — John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester- 
Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury. 

Confessions of a Hypochondriac. Two Papers. 

Original Poetry, by James Montgomery, John Clare, John 

Keats, John Scott, Bernard Barton, Barry Cornwall, Allan 

Cunningham, &c. &c. 



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" Captain Clutterbuck. Do you mean Allan Ramsay? 

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This lad I to myself will take, 
He shall be mine, and I will make 
A Poet of my own.' *' 

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LAMIA, ISABELLA, the EVE of St. AGNES, 

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ESSAYS IN RHYME, on Morals and Manners. 

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British Review, March 182?, 



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